An afternoon chopping logs at my dad's wood. This pile will do me for about
half of next winter. Charlie found a fox to chase and something to roll in.
'Dad, are you a forester, woodsman or an arborealist?' Apparently he's a
forester. And I think it's arborist rather than arborealist. Guy in the
field next door shoots the pheasants, my dad feeds them to keep them off the
land and save them from being shot. Quite partial to pheasant though myself.
I went out on the clubs chain gang tonight. 30 miles with a good few hills. I was thinking I'll be doing well to hang on all the way round after the short lay-off, whilst everyone else seemed to be turbo training. I nearly did as well, and it wasn't fitness that let me down. Half way round the hills done and dusted and after a pacey section led out by Dan, the hamstring was really protesting. Worse then than at any time in the last 12 months. I did the sensible thing, I sat up and cruised round the remaining.
Now I'm faced with the horrible but sensible decision to have a complete lay-off. I'm booked in at the physio on Tuesday, so I'll reassess then, but things are not looking good. My long list of stuff I wanted to do this year lies in tatters. First to go will be the racing, then Nottingham to Monaco looks seriously in jeopardy, and the times I'll get for the time trials will be just too depressing. Perhaps the best I can hope for are some late season sportives. My return to fell running this year is also out the window, so much for Tigger's Tor in a week and I'd had some fantastic runs in the snow over new year.
Perhaps I'll start going down the climbing wall again...
Propose to do this ride soon, well as soon as I feel fit enough after the imposed lay-off.
View Larger Map
Reading Map Addict by Mike Parker, kindly loaned by Mat. This bit took my
fancy; the most featurless square kilometre in the UK is this, just south of
the Humber at Ousefleet. It contains just a single electricity pylon, pan
flat and doesn't even have a dyke, tricky in this part of the world.
Washing up is a pain in the butt with kids. Obviously there is twice as much of it but most of it seems to be plastic. The plastic stuff floats on the top and makes a bid for freedom, out of the bowl and into the sink, at every opportunity. The plastic stuff loves to be greasy even when its clean it feels greasy thus wasting more time working out if the damned thing is clean or not. The plastic stuff gets stained and microwave etched thus making it even more difficult to work out if it is clean or not. Before kids the bit of the bowl, plate, spoon etc that really needed cleaning was the concaved bit, you know the bit where an adult would put the food. Kids put the food everywhere so now washing up is like, well you might as well chuck it all on the drive and get the pressure washer out. I hate plastic. Just give them regular crockery and cutlery, if it breaks then they learnt something.
