Cycling Proficiency

It is now just over a week until I arrive in Auckland, and my hardcore programme of exercise coupled with strict dietary guidelines has remained as somewhat of a myth.

When my boyfriend left and I moved in with my SP I felt there was nothing I couldn’t do, with regards to achieving physical fitness. Everything was within reach: the figure that I’d dreamt of, toned muscular outlines carefully teetering on the edge of attractive and slightly masculine (it’s a difficult thing to balance), a flawless stomach. I could do it.

And as the weight gradually started to subside and my fatty tissues assumed their intended roles (with some confusion and a lot of guidance), I really believed that it was achievable. And for the first time in my life, I was actually getting somewhere near the figure that I have a feeling God originally intended (but got somewhat sidetracked with producing).

But then something happened.

Maybe I tipped the balance too far. Maybe the reward of eating the quantities of the foodstuffs that I wanted (and not that I needed, which I have to state are two vastly different goal posts) and consuming a glass of wine for every 10 minutes of ‘strenuous’ (in its loosest term) exercise wasn’t actually equal to the calories I was burning.

But everything’s well, stopped.

And there’s another reason for my lack of shrinkage: I’ve got bored.

I voiced my concerns to my SP earlier. She too suffers from the same ailment. Exercise consistently and vigorously for the weeks leading up to whatever event where you wish to be at your most attractive (wedding, university reunion, seeing your boyfriend for the first time in 3 and a half months) and then, in the few days before said date…..stop.

Genius.

Nothing seems to be inspiring me. Not my Jordan DVD, not running, nothing.

But the lack of defined torso is a consistent and relentless reminder that really I have to get off my arse and do something.

So, after a lengthy day of banner ads, uncooperative Actionscript and ‘not-quite-right-but-will-have-to-do-because-I-can’t-think-of-anything-better’ designs (quite a common conclusion in the creative life of The WebStress, I had the ingenious idea of going out on a bike ride with my dad.

Now it sounds fairly idyllic cycling in Cornwall. Miles upon miles of unspoilt countryside, beautiful windy lanes, no pollution, shiny gates.

And lots and lots of hills.

And there are hills, then there are Cornish hills. And for every beautiful, exquisite race winding down into a valley, the wind whipping through your ears (causing me no end of pain but I ignore it as best I can and try to concentrate on the fact that I am exercising without actually doing anything, and carefully avoiding acknowledging that the not doing anything means I’m actually not exercising), for every downhill there is an uphill.

And that uphill is, somehow, much steeper and much longer than it’s neighbour.

It doesn’t help that I’m a terrible cyclist. I passed my cycling proficiency at primary school. At the age of 25 I am just managing taking all but my thumb off the handlebar to give a semi-wave to thank passers-by, and on Saturday I achieved an extremely brief full hand wave for the first time in years.

My cycling career from the age of eight up until the last few weeks has been, at best, intermittent and unimpressive. I learnt to ride in Berkshire, where the hills were undemanding, even for a small person. Unfortunately, even with such slight inclines, my sister still managed to crack her head open hurtling down one of them and together we were forced to pioneer the extremely unattractive Tuff-Top cycle helmets: great wads of polystyrene that were painted in red and white stripes and stretched as wide and as high as the eye could see.

At the time, despite my sister’s injury, I was not impressed that my family had decided to champion the cause of safe cycling, even at the tender age of 8. Especially as no other bugger was. But I played the dutiful daughter (actually, there was no dutiful about it, we either went cycling with these obscenities strapped to our heads, or we didn’t and heaven only knows why I didn’t opt for the latter). If we wanted to ride with our friends, we did them with our skulls wrapped in polystyrene (an updated, literal version, I can only imagine, of being wrapped in cotton wool, being less itchy and able to fend off an impact).

But then we moved to Cornwall and, not only did my friends live a considerable distance from me, between my house and theirs was most certainly a hill or five. And my bike, I seem to recall, was for town use.

I attempted tackling the countryside a few times on my bike. I have vivid memories of panting up hills and freewheeling down, but I have a feeling these memories most likely are all derived from the same one or two occasions.

So, after a while, it was resigned to the garage, alongside the rest of the sports equipment my dad had purchased to try to encourage my sister and myself to pursue active lifestyles.

And my skills, along with my bike, were left to gather dust.

So, in January 2005, suffering from the same deluded health kick as millions of Britons, my boyfriend and I decided that we would purchase mountain bikes.

We had the best intentions. We rode around Epping Forest. Three times. We….well that’s about all I did. And then it all went horribly wrong.

On one memorable trip which involved venturing onto London’s roads, long after we’d learnt that cycle lanes in London share their tarmac with buses and taxis, I was assaulted by a stationary white van when the driver, oblivious to my presence, opened his door into me.

Had I not had a cycle helmet on at this point I would have suffered a lot worse injuries, I’m sure. As it was, I limped home, whimpering, after momentarily losing my sight and nearly vomiting. I can only think I wouldn’t have got off quite so lightly had I not adorned my head in a more sophisticated yet still essentially polystyrene protector.

My resurrected cycling career ended as swiftly as it had started. And my bike, its wounds gaffa-taped and its gear-shift never quite the same, was dragged to the top of our second floor flat and, with the exception of a few brave ventures, left.

So, Cornwall mark II – this time I was going to become a cyclist.

As with primary school chairs, I assumed that the hills would be smaller and I’d laugh at my previous attempts as a podgy child and, later, still quite podgy teenager to conquer them.

I’d tried this once before, last May. My boyfriend and I, proud new owners of my now sadly departed Rover, decided that we would exploit this new found freedom and take our matching Treks (his obviously being a more advanced model with him actually being able to ride competently, while mine was one up from the suspension-lacking bone-shaker).

This was a big mistake. I think we probably recognised this 10 minutes into our journey.

Not only was it pouring with rain, it was freezing. But we weren’t going to be defeated.

My boyfriend was quickly disappointed in realising that it is pretty much 99% of lane cycling around our house. No woods to explore, our mountain bikes itching to venture off the beaten track. Instead, I took him around a route that I thought wouldn’t be too suicidal.

It was horrific. Even now, I think of the cross words my boyfriend didn’t say to me and am in awe at his patience, his stopping to wait for his unfit, unqualified girlfriend. The dead end that I made him cycle down. The hill that even he had to walk up.

But with my fitness levels higher than they have been of recent years, I thought it was time to start afresh.

Over the past few weeks, my dad and I have cycled on the only route that isn’t littered with uninviting hills has he has a racing bike and I am just crap. But today I thought we’d try a little something new.

I am still here, still able to type, still able to walk, so obviously it didn’t go that badly. And now, after a hefty lesson in the mind boggling ways of how gears actually work by a family friend (not actually magic, as I’d previously assumed), using a series of dinner plates, I am actually managing to use the majority of the middle range of my 24 gears to some degree of effect.

But at one point, attempting the most vicious hill we were to encounter, I looked ahead to see my dad leaning into a hedge to pause up ahead and I actually thought ‘Oh my god I’ve killed him’.

We did it, my dad, in his high-vis jacket and baseball cap (which I did mention won’t do much to keep his brains in) cycling ahead and then waiting for his daughter, panting and wheezing, soaked in rain and sweat, to catch up. We must have looked ridiculous to passers by.

But it worked pretty well. At the end of the journey my helmet was dripping with a dowdy, typically English version of an Australian cork hat. I was covered in a variety of farmyard faeces and my bike had developed a rather painful sounding whine, a vocalisation of my inner screamings. But we did it.

After we’d conquered one of the most painful of hills, the rain at this point thrashing down, I yelled to my dad ‘we get to have a drink tonight’.

He yelled back ‘what, water’.

And that was that. It was of course the response that I should have given when answering back to the antagonistic side of my conscience when it was goading me into a drink. But, after months of exercising with my SP and my boyfriend’s sister and being rewarded with some sort of alcoholic treat, I have to say it was a rather disappointing result. I’ve had a cup of tea now and some fizzy pop but it just isn’t cutting it.

In the shower, trying to scrub off the countryside that had managed to get itself into the unlikeliest of places and trying to erase the Lilly Allen lyrics from my brain (which I eventually managed to do with a silent rendition of ‘God gave rock and roll to you’, my mind believing that this was, of course, an appropriate alternative), I am embarrassed to say that I came up with an ‘if else’ statement for my weight loss programme, which I can only attribute to my afternoon of Actionscripting.

If ($calorificIntake > $exerciseAchieved){
$bodyFat ++;
} elseif ($calorificIntake < $exerciseAchieved){
$bodyFat --;
}

Now I nearly omitted this from my blog. But I felt it important that my friends were really and truly justified in their consistent ridiculing and ribbing of the WebStress in highlighting how geeky she really is.

And now, in order to wash my hands of these coding monstrosities (which are probably floored in some way anyhow, not only am I a geeky coder, I am a bad geeky coder) and scrape together some vague semblance of womanhood, I am going to paint my nails.