The Bike Ride - Starting Training

I have learned the meaning of a euphemism this week: "you're looking well" = "have you lost weight?" It surprised me how many people said that to me this weekend. I've started training for an epic charity bike ride, and have been doing seventy-five kilometres per week to ease into it (that increases to two hundred this coming week). The four kilograms that evaporated since my last visit to the nurse simply escaped my notice.

I should probably point out that before the start of this year the last time I rode a bicycle was more than a decade ago. I used to ride home from school every day to save petrol, but stopped after a taxi knocked me down. After developing an irrational fear of other road users - something I only partly overcame when I learned to drive - I embraced the sedentary lifestyle and ignored anything that could hurt me.

In January of this year, I met up with an ex lecturer who spends his retirement going on cycling holidays and suggested we ride out to see the Falkirk Wheel. We didn't end up cycling there; we took the train to Falkirk and then rode from the station to the Wheel. It was still an enjoyable day out, so I started to go for the occasional afternoon ride along the Union Canal, only about twenty kilometres each and spending as little time on roads as possible.

Then I committed to doing the Bike Ride of Epicness (click here for the route) for Care International, which requires me to cover between sixty and eighty kilometres per day. Another confession: when I rode home from school, I wasn't a very fast rider; the ten kilometre trip averaged forty-five minutes. While fourteen kilometres per hour is an easy pace in terms of calorie burn, Google Maps thinks each day's ride will take about five hours if I ride at my old speed. Riding around town - yes, I've conquered my fear of being run over enough to ride the streets of Edinburgh - I've been averaging twenty kilometres per hour, including time slowing for traffic lights and people pushing baby-chicanes (you know those three- or four-wheeled things that take up most of the cycle path and house a tiny human along with all its paraphernalia) along cycle paths. Thankfully, bike routes have an unspoken hierarchy: give to faster traffic. I'll report back next week with a progress update...hopefully, I won't have sacrificed the speed for the increased distance.