Time for a rest.

I’m not well. This is difficult to admit by someone who’s virtually never ill. I noticed 8 days ago, on the Saturday, when I rode my mountain bike that hill climbing felt extremely hard. I think I was already starting to suffer from the beginnings of bronchitis, hence my reduced performance. I only exercised once during the week with a trip in my pedal powered boat and I seemed unusually tired. By mid week I had developed a cold which hit me hard. I’ve been coughing and the cold was clearly on my chest. I should have rested but I never like to take time off from hard exercise so took the boat out again today. I’d completed some modifications and was keen to test. Pulling the boat to the canal was unusually hard but I thought it was simply because I wasn’t fully recovered from the cold.

On the water there was a massive amount of weed, the like of which I’ve never witnessed before. It was hanging from my rudder and slowing me down. I only sailed for a mile before admitting that I was exhausted and it wasn’t doing me any good. The boat seemed very slow and when I climbed onto the bank I could immediately see why. I hadn’t hooked the rope, which I use to launch and pull the boat out, onto it’s retaining catches. It had dragged in the water, trailing a long wake of thick weed. What a disaster. I got no useful data to tell me if I’d improved propulsion. I cleared the weed, tucked the rope away and did a short circuit where the boat performed completely differently.

I was too tired to do any more so pulled the boat, now named Osprey, out of the water and prepared to go home. Pulling the 50 kg load up the gentle hill towards home was too much at times and I was panting. I couldn’t seem to get any air into my lungs and needed to stop to catch my breath several times, which has never happened in 70 previous boat missions. I’m now resolved to rest for as long as required to clear my chest and will just have to call dog walking sufficient exercise until then.