THE GOOD BUCK

Another birthday. Meh. Still, better than the alternative.   I’ve decided I’m going ahead, slowly, with the bike conversion. I say “conversion”, because it’s gone way beyond changing the handlebars. I’ve ordered a sheet of 5mm thick, strong aluminium (there are different strengths, who knew?) and I’ll see how I get on with making a clock bracket. If I don’t make a horrendous lash of that, then I’ll think move on to the rest of the stuff I need to do.  The aluminium was only £13 so it’s not going to break the bank to see how I get on.   My other new is the physio guy got back to me. He’s really good, and oddly conscientious. I say that because he’s written me out three long and involved emails and replies, but because he can’t physically see me, due to lockdown, he won’t take any money. I mean, if I was an existing client, or whatever, maybe, but I’m just some randomer pestering him to work for free. I said that to him, that I was glad to pay as it’s harsh asking him to work for free, but he’s still not taking any money. Decent chap, straight away. He started me off with a load of tests, putting a belt or towel under my relaxed foot and lifting/ twisting without using foot muscles. Prodding under the painful area, etc to make sure it wasn’t a fracture, and it was actually the muscles or tendons causing the pain. After the test I realised it wasn’t a pain on the top of my foot so much. Now that it was really hurting I could specify where the pain was exactly. That lump. Excuse the malting skin look, it’s ibugel flaking off. Apparently this is your peronious tertius, which is a muscle that acts a tendon (except for 8% of people who don’t have one at all, I read. Weird if true.) It controls the lifting and rotation of the foot. He said that the lower limbs take longer to heal as they are further from the heart and have restricted blood flow. Therefore I should do 10 minutes light rubbing a day to stimulate blood flow to the damaged area. He said that I should wait until the weekend for the initial rest, then focus on cycling or swimming, with much reduced running. He explained that the reason why the pushbike ride hurt so much was because if you have the old, standard flat pedals, you can only press down. With the newfangled clip-in pedals, as your foot is attached to the pedal, you automatically pull up as well as pushing down. (I still think the twisting in and out of the clips made it a lot worse as well). I’ve changed my pedals to the flat ones that came with the bike, and downgraded my short run trainers to pushbike shoes. My run trainers are ‘control’ ones, made to stop you rolling your foot, so hopefully they’ll help […]

I’ve been doing a lot of research and I have the answer to my bike problem. I just want lower handlebars. That’s all. A 20 minute job. OK, so far I’ve taken the fairing off and fitted a back to the clocks. The problem is the handlebars still hit the clocks. The solution is simple. Instead of having the clocks mounted on an arm fixed to the frame, make a mount and attach them to the handlebars. You have to make this plate, complete with sunken drill holes, but it’s do-able. Simple. But wait. That leaves the old arm and plate (two pictures above) hanging in mid air looking ugly. OK, take off the arm. That exposes the air intake in the frame. OK, so you make an air intake cover. But wait, that arm also supports the headlights. So you have to buy headlight support arms that attach to the fork legs and hold the headlight. But they only work for single headlights. So you have to buy a new headlight. And possibly mess around with the wiring as the loom supports two headlights. And because your handlebars are now lower you need to fit a shorter throttle cable off a different model of bike. Ends up looking like this. Actually, looking at it, that does look rather lovely. Hmm. The thing is, I wasn’t going for aesthetics, I just wanted a better riding position. It’s not quite the 20 minute job I envisioned. I’m in two minds about it. But at least I now know the answer, should I choose to pursue it.   The other thing that needs fixing is me. I’ve been nursing damaged tendons on my left foot for about 18 months. Extensor tendonitis, apparently. The tendons that run along the top of your foot and draw your toes back. You can damage them by too tightly lacing your shoes and by overuse. In that time I’ve had other injuries, and the plague, so I’ve stopped running for a whole month on one occasion, and six weeks hardly any running on another. As soon as I started again the pain was back. I had resigned myself to it. It’s just routine now, get out of the shower, slather my foot in ibugel and put on a compression bandage. It only hurts badly after a long run (15+ miles), so I was living with it. A few days ago one of my twitter chums mentioned she should be doing a marathon in the morning (in jest) but it put the thought into my head. So Sunday morning I did the 26.2 miles. Which was stupid anyway, as I’d been doing sprint miles the day before and my legs were battered. I was struggling by mile 7. I forced myself to complete it but it was horrendous. 4 hours 10, so, pitifully slow as well. I was trying to take positives from it; lesson learned, never marathon after hard sprint sessions, first marathon since I broke myself […]

I’ve been holding off doing this post until I’d finished the job and could report in, well, triumph. I thought today was the day. *hangs head in shame* All I wanted to do was to put a tail tidy and a top box on the back (done) and lower handlebars on the front. A modest enough ambition. It’s been hellish. First off I got the bars and realised the fairing wouldn’t allow me turn the front wheel. So I decided to order a cheap, second hand fairing to butcher all the pointy bits off. Supposedly there is only one type of fairing for my bike. Spotted one, ordered it. Wrong one. Huh? It has two screw holes at the top, mine only has one. OK, bought another, assured it was the right one. It arrived, same as the first! What? I did a lot of searching on the genuine Triumph website and realised I was barking up the wrong tree anyway. You can do away with plastics altogether, by simply fitting a back to the (now exposed) clocks. Did so. Assured it was mine. It wasn’t mine. Sort of rounded instead of the angular bits. Sent it back and ordered again. (Each of these attempts involved me taking the fairing off and on, by the way.) New one arrived, right one! Huzzah! Plastic gone, but still got upright sitting position due to the handlebars. So, take the bars and all the bits off, fit the new ones with all the bits, mark where the bits fit, take it all off again, drill two holes in the bars (took ages, like drilling rock!) put it back together again and Viola! Chuffed to bits. That’s a great riding position, right over the tank, and (apart from the necessary evil of the top box) looks smart as a carrot! I put my tools away, grabbed my leather and lid, fired it up, moved 6 inches, went to turn the bars, smacked straight into the clocks. HOW? How is that even possible? I spent a good 5 minutes looking at it in disbelief, then longer trying to adjust the bars. Not happening. I had to take it all off and put my original bars back on. So that was my day. I’ve managed to sell both the fairing I bought, and get a refund on the wrong clock back. but I’m struggling as to where to go from here. The easiest solution would be to reposition the clocks, either drop them down on to the headlights or attach them to the handlebars, but there is an electrical cable with a load of connections that limits travel.  I’m not beaten yet, but I’m taking a fair kicking. It’s a 20 minute job. It’s taken me weeks, months, possibly, and I’m still not there. OK, I’ve got that off my chest. Deep breaths. Which segues me nicely into my other topic; the plague.   I’ve had everyone being concerned about me, even the runners on twitter […]

Things are getting there. Wendy tried to go back to work last week, but with the two bank holidays, and her being lethally contagious an’ all, they said leave it until this week. She went back on Tuesday. She suffered a bout of the horrible weakness in the afternoon, but made it through the day. She was OK today. I’m more or less back to normal (it’s a relative benchmark). I had a dire headache all day yesterday, but that’s par for the course. I went back to work on the 1st of April, I walked across the yard, up a few steps, and was panting. A week later I did two short runs, both panting badly, but I did them. I was worried I might have got the lung damage associated with the plague, but today I ran again and my lungs were no more panty than you’d expect for an unfit, fat bloke. The bug was the perfect storm. I was too poorly ill to run, or move much, and so weak I was constantly eating to try and give myself some energy. Today I pulled on my lycra running shorts and they squashed all my blubber up into a big tyre. That was my wake up call. No more sweet stuff, back to the running. I decided to do a 10 mile run. Actually that was really stupid, they say to increase by a maximum of 10% per week, and I was utterly exhausted doing 6 miles last week. I was mortified by the blubber though. Also I was a little miffed at the self-appointed Twitter Police who monitor people’s activities through their exercise apps and get shouty about anyone exceeding the (advisory) hour per day of exercise. So I wanted to annoy them. On the bright side, I managed to do the full 10 miles, I held my pace in under 9m/m (all in the 8s) even though it was hard work, and my lungs were fine, so no damage, hoorah! Not so good is that as soon as I stopped it hit me like a train. But still, good effort, I’ve started on my weight loss and fitness revival, and hopefully incensed a few self-righteous sorts.   The supermarkets are returning to normal as well. They’ve still got the maximum occupancy thing going on, but if you pick the right time of day you can often get in without queuing. Once inside you can get virtually everything again. As an aside, I saw some New Zealand store manger on the news (on Twitter) saying he’d just had his first hoarder trying to get a refund on 150 packs of 32 roll toilet papers and 100, 1 litre bottles of hand sanitiser. He was a bit miffed as they are the morons who have caused the empty supermarkets. He told the guy (I assume it was a bloke) where to go.   Something else that is looking to return to normal is my hours. I’ve been […]