This week marked the first time that I had cycled to work and back on two consecutive days. It is amazing to me how four journeys of five and a half miles each with approximately 12 hour gaps in between can be so much more exhausting than cycling the same total distance, 22 miles, all on one day (which is what we did a couple of weekends ago when we went to Waltham Abbey and back). Last night, the last mile or so was torture - my legs were aching and I was tired, but the worst thing was the hunger. I was sooooo hungry. See, the thing is, I see cycling to and from work as just that - commuting. I don't really see it as exercise, even though my body clearly recognises it as such, which is part of the reason I like it so much. However, the downside of this is that I'm really rubbish at making sure I'm eating enough of the right things to sustain the extra exercise I'm doing without completely overdoing it at the wrong times.
At this point, there will be quite a few seasoned sports people reading this and saying "you don't need extra food for pootling about for a few miles on a bike" - well, let me tell you that, actually, when you're not used to a particular type of exercise and you suddenly start doing rather a lot of it as well as working a few too many hours, you do need more food. Because I'm so rubbish at sorting this out, I end up deciding to eat my evening meal at home, even though I'm not leaving the office until 9 or 10 p.m., having had a normal-sized lunch at my normal lunchtime and only a small (usually healthy) snack at about 4 or 5 p.m., so by the time I get home I'm so blimmin' hungry that I end up eating all sorts of wrong things like chocolate and cake and pizza and not nearly enough right things because, frankly, at that point all of the food in the world is not enough.
My cycle commuting journeys have now, happily, settled into a routine of uneventfulness, which pleases me greatly. Over the last couple of days, they have only been punctuated by the aforementioned hunger and a very obnoxious man with two (loose) dogs in the park at whom James rang his bell as we approached very slowly from behind, in order to let him know we were there and ensure we didn't hurt the dogs - the man called James a stupid idiot for no apparent reason, although it eventually transpired that "you're all stupid idiots"; we presume he didn't mean all people, all men, all people under 35, or all software developers, so we concluded that it could only be all people in Lycra, all people in fluorescent raincoats or all people on bikes. James tried, very calmly, to explain that he was actually trying to assist the man and his dogs in not being run over by bikes, but the guy was having none of it.
I had a long discussion with a colleague on Wednesday on how to deal with passing That Place (where I had my fall last week) on the way home. I wasn't sure whether to pull off the road at the same place to prove that I could, or to carry on and go across the junction now that I had sussed the lanes out. We came to the conclusion that I should go across the junction so that I could advance rather than getting hung up about the accident. I did just that, but when I got to the junction, I realised just how steep a hill start it was and I nearly didn't make it away from the lights. However, last night, I managed to leave work at a slightly more reasonable time and it was light enough to cycle through the park (and down Endymion Road), so I did pull off at That Place and discovered what it was that had been my undoing the previous time - a drain cover, which would have been wet.
It was great to get home and be rewarded by an enormous bowl of spaghetti bolognese thanks to James, who was also extremely hungry. Today I didn't cycle to work, partly because I'm tired and partly because I want to be fresh for a trip out tomorrow, and I have consequently spent a large amount of the day eating. Popcorn next. Yum!
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