The day to day joys of cycling to work.

Well this morning was interesting. Within about 30 seconds of leaving my house, while sitting at the first set of lights round the corner, mine goes green and as I pedal out and turn right, a 'fellow cyclist' jumps their red light skims past the gap between me and the curb and pedals of in a wibbly wobbly mad fashion. Nutter. It wouldn't have been so bad, if his top speed was in any way proportionate to his rate of acceleration. He could pedal like the wind, but apparently his top gear maxed out at about 10mph. I caught him up within about fifty yards and asked why he jumped the light. His excuse was that I should give way to him because he was on a bike too...

Nutter.

Anyway, I rode off and just tried to forget about it, bloody nonchalant cyclists, and concentrated on the rest of my commute. The roads were pretty empty in town. It was a nice change from the exhaust fume filled traffic jams I usually come across. I must have been a bit earlier than normal.

Now my commute consists of me riding down a big hill from my house to the river, then crossing a bridge, and going up another big hill at the other side. The problem is, on the way to work, the hill at the other side is climbed within about 500 yards of the road, as opposed to about 4 miles of the road going the other way. It’s like cycling into a brick wall and I’ve never managed to get up the whole thing without getting off at some point to either rest, or walk a bit of it, as my gears don’t go low enough for me to climb it very well. I have two choices most the time. I can either get out of the saddle and grind my way up it (usual choice), or I can stick it in as low a gear as possible and hope I don’t hit any headwind at all, or else I’ll simply stop, and lose all motivation to get going again, get off, and walk up it with the bike.

Today was different though. On a Tuesday, not the usual day for cycling heroics, and I’ll probably pay for it tomorrow, but I got out that saddle and grinded from start to finish, head down, gritted teeth, and I did it! I got up those 500 yards and I kept going. I was a king, I was the man, I was… fucking knackered! I must have lowered my average speed from about 15mph-5. I just didn’t have it in me to even pick up pace on the flats, or down hill bits (not a lot of them on the second half of the commute either way). Finally got my breath back during a gravel path near the end of my commute, where, because of my skinny road tyres, I have to get off and walk with the bike, or there is a great probability that I’ll faceplant the nice collection of orange stones under foot. This meant that at least when I got to work; I wasn’t a quivering breathless wreck.

Oh how I can’t wait for this supposed extra fitness to come along from all this.