Only 1.5 miles!!!

I have just walked it from Hyde Bus station back to my house. It took me 45 minutes and by the time I got home I felt like I had just walked a marathon distance on my hands.

It is times like this that I really feel for those that have long term disabilities and have to use sticks all the time, I was sweating like I had run miles and even had to stop a few times before my arms fell off.

I still have the voice in my head that screams "KEEP GOING!" so I am either going mad or its just what keeps me going.

Really looking forward to getting this cast off already and its only been a week since I had it put on.

Oh well only got 4 more weeks to go before I get it removed (I hope) then back to feeling normal.

The wheels are in motion!

I though it best to send an email to the two charities I will be doing the bike ride for next year as I wouldn't want to get a slap on the wrist for using their names and logos without their permission.

Today I got an email back from Christies saying they love the idea and will be happy to help me aid stuff that I may need. I think they could always help publicise and promote the ride and hopefully it will help me in drumming up support too.

I haven't had anything from the East Cheshire Hospice as yet but it has only been a day or two and they are probably only volunteers looking at there email once In a blue moon.

If it comes to it I may have to write to them, maybe even visit them too.

I also need to come up with a plan for the rest of the things I will need.

Bikes (a spare may be required)
Tools for bike.
Vehicle for support
Drivers (a few may be, hopefully voulenteers too)
A medic/physio (I guess I will be driving my body beyond normal limits).
Clothing
Food
Promotional stuff

Well I have a feeling that the ride will be the easy part!!!

I will keep you posted and if you have any ideas let me know.

On sticks not out in the sticks!

Well after my accident last week I have up to 3 months on crutches as I have to let my ankle heal. I do have a rather nice looking purple pot on my leg though. I thought I had better get purple as it is Lynne's favourite colour and so at least as and when she has time to look at least that might make her a little happier.

I do really feel for her as she is having to do so much more than her fare share around the house and with the kids as I am unable to lift anything attract requires two hands or moving any distance.

I also cannot drive at the minute too which is a real pain in the bottom as I really need to be able to drive. So I now have to catch the bus to work, which is mind numbing! The buses aren't bad at all really. I get the stagecoach bus though as they are newer, more reliable and cheaper than first bus on the same route.

Sitting on the bus with nothing to do with ones mind apart from watch the world go by, read the Metro or just have a mind in neutral moment has obviously left me time to do some thinking.

This challenge I set for myself this year was to ride coast to coast in a day (and hopefully in under 10 hours). As I am now going to have a lot more time to train and get my act together I think that next year I should do something a bit bigger and harder. The cause will be for charity (and because I love to suffer). Christies and the East Cheshire Hospice will be the ones I want to benefit from my activities.

I am looking at doing the coast to coast ride in a day (which will be great fun) then going straight down to Cornwall all way to Lands end (by car or course). I then want to be riding from Lands End (that's the pointy bit at the bottom left of the country for those who don't know) all the way to John O'Groats (pointy bit at top of Scotish part of the country!). All this sounds very good and well and will mean I have literally crosses the country by bike, no religious pun intended! However the hard part that I want to do for the second part of this epic journey is that I will do it non stop! In short once I get on my bike at the start in the south, I will not stop or get off (exempt for traffic or death) until I have reached the Finish. The record is just over 44 hours. I would be happy with 50 and know that will be a really hard 2 and a bit days. Real hell on 2 wheels.

The hard thing to do of course is get support, which includes all the tech support I would need, plus I would be looking at Corperate Sponsorship (don't think that will be easy but let's try anyway). The really hard thing to do of course is convince "The Wife!", long suffering but supportive as she is, I do love Lynne to bits really.

For now though I am stuck on a pair of cruches and unable to even walk my dogs. Thankfully it will only be a few weeks (5 left to go) until I can get my cast off. Then I have physio and back into training.

What are your thoughts?

Wham! Here ends my ride...this year! Or does it???

Well yesterday looked like a really good day to be riding to work. I was even toying with the notion of riding a longer than usual route into work. After a little cuddling with the kids when they got up before I left, I decided to just do the normal straight forward 7 mile ride to work instead.

This sounded like a great idea at the time. Besides what is the worse that can happen.........


Well there I was just pootling along the road from Woodly to Breadbury when a lovely Ginger haired bloke walked out into the road in front of me seconds ( and I do mean literally 2 seconds) before I was going to be occupying the same space. I think I shouted something like look out, but it came out more like "laaaaaaghhhhh...umph" as I narrowly managed to avoid hitting the chap head on. I did clip him and in his own words I only brushed against him, but in doing this it threw me completely off balance and heading towards the wrong side of the road at speed.

It all happened so fast after that. I remember hitting my head and thinking another big win for helmet wearing. My glasses came off and I went I hope they don't break they are brand new. My bike hit me in the back and my iPhone flew past my head!!! Weird that usually doesn't happen.

I was also well aware at this point that I was in the direct path of oncoming traffic and the idiots around here don't stop for anybody. I was in grave danger of having a second accident in one day.
I jumped up and tried to stand as I would expect that I should be able too, only to find my left foot didn't seem to be working properly. I then had to crawl in a three legged lame animal type crawl, dragging my bike behind, just trying to get off the road out of the traffic. Someone already on the pavement came to see if I was ok and the chap I nearly hit came over being all apologetic saying it was his fault as he wasn't looking. There is even a pedestrian crossing that he couldn't be bothered using only meters away.

As one kind lady was busy calling 999 an ambulance just happened to turn up. They stopped and started to help me out. It was funny because as they spoke to the control centre they said we have come across this accident but the control centre told them to carry on and another ambulance will be there in 10 minutes. They obviously told control otherwise and scrapped me up. They were great and helped me out loads. They got me to hospital ok all be no blue lights (bit disappointing as I have never been in a civilian ambulance and felt that I deserved blue lights, inner child calling!!!).

Once I got to Stepping Hill I was a bit surprised to find that I was wheeled straight into reception by a nurse (this is after the paramedics had done there handover) and straight back out the door to be dumped in the waiting room for over an hour. Even the paramedic commented on the nurse not even reading the notes they had made.

I did find that throughout my entire time at Stepping Hill a majority of the staff were great and when they did have anything to do with you really help lots. Any other time they just looked at you( if at all) like you were an unwelcome problem to be avoid at all cost.

Anyway I took this picture of my ankle while waiting (again) for an X-ray.

You can see that I have dislocated the bones along the top and they are pushing out the left side. I also chipped one of the joints too. 

I had great fun with a nurse and doctor trying to convince me otherwise as they tried to manually put it back in with only entenox for relief. I did later however get to experience the high of morphine entenox and several other very strong drugs as they tried again. I didn't care by this point of course.

Later that evening they knocked me out which was one of the weirdest experiences of my life as they didn't even give me any warning. Anyway they snapped it all back into place and made sure the break looked like it had closed properly etc. I was lucky in a way as if this didn't happen I would have to have had a further operation to pin it, but thankfully they decided not too.

That would have stung a bit.

Anyway I now have a cast on my leg and instructions not to put any weight on my leg for the next 3 months. After that  I have months of physio so no cycling for about 6 months.

I am not happy as I will be missing out on all the cycling I wanted to do this year. I will however be doing the coast to coast next year along with everything I have missed off this year.

I will keep the blog updated too. 

A Grand Day Off!

Today I am having a rest day. My legs ache a little (but nowhere near as bad as I thought they would be) so I thought it best to have a day with the family and relax, as much as you can with 2 small children and 2 messy dogs.

Some people I realised may be wondering what I am on about when I mention climbs and the categories involved in the ones I am undertaking.

A detailed explanation can be found below.

The short version is the lower the climb number (they go from 5 to 1 and then a few letters that would hurt far too much to ride. A category 5 climb will make you sweat quite a bit, cat 4 will make you sweat and swear a bit, cat 3 will make you think you need to hospital and swear a lot more, cat 2 will make you think you need your head checked, require an ambulance with a defib on board following you plus the lady with the swear jar will be making a packet, cat 1 will be all of the above plus the desire to hurt anyone who says its not that bad really and it's only a little bit of pain for a short time. Women who have experienced child birth think it hurts a bit and pro cyclists love to do these for a laugh!

Then there are things like the HC categories of the world. These are French (and nobody likes them! Not even the French.) they are reserved for a special bread of nutters that get paid to ride up hills and appear on stages of the Tour De France etc. I won't be going anywhere near any of these any time soon.

The only advantage to all of these climbs of courses the big Weeeeeeee factor as you come down the other side (with a big smile and a great sense of achievement of course).

In all it's why I love to ride. That and just constantly beating Steve into work on a daily basis even though he has a super shiny new road bike. (love you really Steve).

For the definitive blurb on climb catagories see the text below.

Enjoy the riding though.

Information about Climbs

For any climb to be rated (receive a climb score/category) it must be at least500 meters in length with an average grade of 3% or more.

All climb scores are based on distance, grade/elevation change, and maximum elevation. The combination of these factors drives all final climb categories and there is no subjective analysis used in the final scoring of any climb score. All other climbs that do not meet the criteria for HC to Cat 5 are simply too small to rate and can usually be crossed easily by bicycle, running, or walking. The original concepts for the MapMyFitness categorization of all climbs came from the categorized climb ratings given by the UCI for races like the Tour de France and other professional cycling events. Our methodology is unique in several ways to allow for categorizations to be relevant for all sports and we added an additional difficulty with category 5 climbs. If you have any questions please feel free to email support@mapmyfitness.com.

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Climb Definitions

HC climb - "Hors Categorie" - (a French term for above category) climbs are the hardest rating/score given to any climb. All climb scores are based on distance, grade/elevation change, and maximum elevation. The combination of these factors drives all final climb categories and there is no subjective analysis used in the final scoring of any climb score. HC climbs will traditionally be very long (over 10 miles), very steep (average grades above 8 to 10%), or very high (above 11,000 feet) but again some extremely steep or long climbs could alone qualify it as an HC rated climb.

Cat 1 Climb - These rated climbs are the next most difficult after HC climbs. The exactly same methodology is used in determining their difficulty as HC climbs but they fall next in terms of overall difficulty. All climb scores are based on distance, grade/elevation change, and maximum elevation.

Cat 2 Climb - These rated climbs are the next most difficult after Cat 1 climbs. The exactly same methodology is used in determining their difficulty as Cat 1 climbs but they fall next in terms of overall difficulty. All climb scores are based on distance, grade/elevation change, and maximum elevation.

Cat 3 Climb - These rated climbs are the next most difficult after Cat 2 climbs. The exactly same methodology is used in determining their difficulty as Cat 2 climbs but they fall next in terms of overall difficulty. All climb scores are based on distance, grade/elevation change, and maximum elevation.

Cat 4 Climb - These rated climbs are the next most difficult after Cat 3 climbs. The exactly same methodology is used in determining their difficulty as Cat 3 climbs but they fall next in terms of overall difficulty. All climb scores are based on distance, grade/elevation change, and maximum elevation.

Cat 5 Climb - These rated climbs are the least difficult of all the categorized climbs. The exactly same methodology is used in determining their difficulty as Cat 4 climbs but they the least difficult of all the rated climbs. All climb scores are based on distance, grade/elevation change, and maximum elevation.

The big Cat has been conquered

Today was to be a 40 mile day. Indeed I loaded the car this morning with all the kids swimming stuff. My cycling gear  and attached my bike to the back of the car. We went off for the kids swimming lessons as usual.

I was sat watching Evie swim and in an attempt to stay awake in the rather warm swimming pool (it's not easy sitting on the side just watching), I was going through my mental check list to see if I had not forgotten anything and then suddenly........... Pants! I realised I had left the most important item I could possibly forget, my helmet!

Thankfully this didn't turn out to be too much of a disaster as it gave us chance to go home and put the towels on to wash etc.

This did mean that my route would be about 6 miles shorter than I had planned, but not too bad in the great scheme of things.

My actual route can be seen below.

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As you can imagine it was a bloody hard slog just getting to Buxton.

I actually found the hardest part was just a few miles in going from Charlsworth to Churnal lane over Monks Road. It was about a 25% hill that just seemed to go on forever! That really hurt my legs and I was even considering turning back and going a different route. However that little voice in the back of my head screamed at me to keep going and assured me that the pain will go once I die, or get to the top. Either of which could have happened easily.

The long hill out of Whaley Bridge also just seemed to go on forever. But as the wife informed me that Buxton is actually quite high up that would explain the long slog.

I did triumphantly arrive at the Cat and Fiddle pub but didn't stop for anything more than a gob full of drink and to raise a water bottle to the Moggy. It does however feel really good to have been over that hill and I certainly felt/will remember every second of the journey. 

In all I can safely say that it was hard, testing, but a damd good ride and I am glad I did it.

Anyway, now the Cat has been "bagged" I wonder what I will do next?

So many hills and so little time!

Still chilly!!!

Today I just did the commute too and from work so it's 7 ish miles each way. Hardly anything major and apart from the cold and the really bad traffic it was fun and just nice to be out on my bike.

It was a little too close to freezing for my liking though and nearly ended up renaming this blog brass monkeys! Warmer than yesterday though so thats not a bad thing.

Tomorrow I am cycling just over 40 miles. Depending on what they weather is like it will dictate if I go via Buxton then Cat and fiddle to Macc or a lower route round to Macc.

I know which I would prefer as I have a book of 100 greatest climbs and The Cat is one of them!

We shall see tomorrow, hopefully it won't snow again too soon. Bring back the summer please.....

25 minutes on the turbo trainer.

Wll it's exactly what it says on the tin! I did 25 minutes on the turbo trainer to work up a good sweat tonight. Now just sat watching crap on tv and trying to rehydrate myself.

This morning I could have (and should have) cycled to work, but unfortunately I got up 30 minutes later than I had planned for and so had to use the car.

I sat in traffic watching all the bikes fly past me just wishing that I had used my bike instead of the car.

Tomorrow I will be using the car and plan to do a good route too. Details to follow after I have done it.

Argh! Not more snow!

Well I woke up this morning to find that we had a good 4 or 5 inches of snow overnight. Thankfully I had no plans to cycle to work today and infact had to drop both the kids off at nursery and school.
Lots of people out on the roads clearly forget how to drive when it's a bit snowy so the pre-requisite traffic jam had developed in Hyde (and the surrounding area). This just made for a really long journey to get across Hyde (40 minutes), but strangley enough I the got to work in only 20 minutes. Not too down on my time in the end.

Tonight it was turbo trainer night. I only made for a 25 minute session and didn't work too hard. Just got my heart rate up enough for it to matter and worked my legs enough to get a good sweat going too.

I just hope all this training pays off in the end.

After I decided to be a bit bike geeky and I removed and cleaned the rear cassette then also cleaned the fly wheels on the rear derailiure too. Checked it all out and everything runs really smooth again now.

Now just trying to decide if I should ride to work tomorrow or not, I think that will be a weather and road check in the morning. More miles more hills. Love it!

Wind, rain, wet roads, lovely day for a ride!

That's right wet and windy, loads of road spray. Head winds on every hill. In all it was a really good training ride. 22.5 miles for today in just over an hour. Not bad for the first of the year. See my route here. A nice gentle ride around the local area with on or two hills thrown in.

It did hurt a little and my legs certainly feel like they have done 22+ miles, but I enjoyed it non the less.

Back on my bike! Hurrah!

Well today was the first day in a very long time (nearly a month), that I was able to get back on my bike and just do a simple straight forward commute too and from work.

It felt great is what I will say about it. After spending a few hours riding a turbo trainer and just doing dull indoor static riding (sweating like a mad man in the process) it just felt so good to be back out on the road.

It is still like the wild west going to work in the morning I must admit. People either don't see you, or just don't care if you are there. You really do have to keep your wits about you and have eyes in the back of your head. I am constantly looking over my shoulders and have to just give cars the room to be stupid in.

That said I still wouldn't have swapped it for anything, even this evening when it was a little damp and dark. I still love just being on my bike and feeling the freedom and agility it brings.

My fitness wasn't as bad as I thought it would be too. I managed to get to work and back without dying and my legs feel ok too.

Now just looking forward to my next outing, further, longer, bigger, harder! Thats what we want. Hurrah!