Fitting a ride in whilst busy.

My wife and I have retired early from full time work. We think it’s better to be less well off but have time to live the lives we want. I’ve often heard retired people saying that they have no time to do things and frankly it’s annoying. Surely with no work to do each day you have time hanging heavy on your hands? No. Not in our case. Yes, I’m going to annoy you by telling you that we’re short of time!

We returned from holiday last Saturday and had lots to do to get back into life at home. Today we’re visiting Pot Fest in Cumbria which, perhaps disappointingly, is ceramics, not cannabis. Tomorrow we’re viewing a caravan near Edinburgh so I had to squeeze a mountain bike ride in yesterday. To compound my problems we’re enjoying the wettest July since records began. If I rode my usual trails I’d have a filthy bike, needing more time to clean and service. I decided to ride up the canal bank to the Johnson’s Hillock locks. It’s off road but on a generally hard packed, gravelly surface.

I’m still in recovery from chronic bronchitis so I didn’t push myself in the early stages. I felt as if it was hard work to maintain a speed but I may have forgotten what a decent speed actually feels like. Climbing the 65 feet ascent of the locks I recorded my third fastest time ever. On the way back down I recorded my fastest time ever, so it seems like I need to recalibrate my expectations of speed.

I’m not back to 100% fitness yet and after a relative lack of training over the last couple of months, I have work to do. I hope to test myself on Sunday on a longer, tougher ride to the top of Great Hill, with around 1,500 feet of climbing. I’ll let you know how it goes, assuming Global Warming doesn’t bring us torrential, day long rain.