THE GOOD BUCK

It’s been a good day so I might as well record it.

The last time I was on Trainer Road, (2 days ago) I was hanging on by my fingernails. At the end of each section I was out of air, my legs were slowing, I was standing in places just to keep the pedals turning. It was horrendous. I thought I’d lost all my fitness.

Today I did a 1 hour 15 minute session, containing four 9 minute blocks under/over maximum. You start at 95% of FTP (maximum sustainable power) then ramp up for a minute to 110%, take a minute to ramp down, and repeat. The evil genius of under/overs is as soon as you go ‘over’ you are loading your legs up with lactic acid, then you slowly ramp down to under. Then you have a minute (still at 95% of max) to clear the burn before doing it again. It’s tough going.

I’ve been bashing away at my clarinet and quite enjoying it.

I made it Covid friendly, in case I need in real life lessons.

It has a nice sound and you need to hold good embouchure and remember proper fingering. So all good practice. But obviously what I really want is a sax. I’ve been trying to force myself to learn time. How hard can it be? 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, or 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4? So, so hard. My brain refuses to multitask. I can either read the notes, count the time, or do the tonguing. As soon as do one I lose the other two. But I am persevering with a bloody minded determination. When it finally clicks I’ll have this cracked.

We’ve had a frantic few days. Well, mainly Wendy has. Obviously the first priority was getting the car MOT-ed before the insurance changed their mind, or we got pulled by the plod. Wendy has decided to own the problem of the car. Up until now she has driven it, I’ve had it serviced, MOT-ed, etc. Not, as it turns out, very successfully. Rather than be in the dark as to the status of her car, she’s decided to do it herself now. Which means she’s had to do everything for the first time, on her own (as I’ve been working) and stressed out of her head.

She took the car for it’s MOT. Because of Covid she wasn’t allowed to wait, as I usually do, so she had to go for a walk for an hour. When she got back, despite me having gone over every tyre for tread depth, every light,the wipers, horn, screen wash, fluffy dice (OK, no fluffy dice) it still failed. They said there was a dangerous bulge on a tyre. I hope that was on the inside, because I didn’t see it. She went home stressed and told me. I said if she took it to the nearest tyre fitting place (Kwikfit) she could get back to the garage for the MOT certificate the same day. They kept her there for an hour and 15 minutes. Still madly stressed. Which meant the garage was shut so she had to get her MOT the next day, still with some minors. A chip in the windscreen, and slightly damaged valves on the on of the back tyres. Rather than mess about we ordered a new set of back tyres to be fitted at home, and we’ve got someone coming around the fix the chip. The tyres were done this afternoon, the windscreen gets fixed on Saturday. That’s it then, the car is MOT perfect. Wendy has noticed the aircon is only blowing cool instead of freezing so she’s booked it in for a re-gas on Thursday. Then it’s a perfect car for a couple of years more. Wendy has bravely adopted the motto “Be scared, do it anyway.” All these new things are destruct testing that resolve.

The doctor upped her pills but, whether due to the pills or the bump and consequent faffing about, she’s feeling more stressed. She said one of the possible side effects of the anti-anxiety pill is increased levels of anxiety. I’m not an actual doctor, but I can see flaws in that medication regime.

I’ve often heard that the only reason women can bear to go through with childbirth a second time is that they sort of forget about the unbearable misery of the first time.

I’m fairly sure the same principle applies to motorcycle mechanic-ing.

The front end on my bike turns in weirdly so I ordered new head bearings from the States. They arrived last week and I rang my local bike garage to get them fitted. He said because of the backlog from lockdown it was going to be the end of May at the earliest.

I went for my jab on Monday. That was a slick affair. In and out. A few people online have had a bad reaction to it. Not as bad as, say, choking out your last breaths on a respirator, but not pleasant. I had an extreme reaction to the malaria jab in the army and that was awful, but this time I was fine. Wendy had a sore arm and a mild plague weakness the next day, which went with painkillers, so nothing to write home about. Lisa was dog tired. I didn’t even get a sore arm. The next day I had a headache all day and felt sick, but I get that quite frequently anyway. So either I didn’t get any reaction or the reaction was no worse than a headache day. I’ll take that.

I was working on Tuesday and I got a run to Bristol. That was a nice day out. I was riding in to work in the morning without any gloves moaning “I may lose digits to frostbite”, in the afternoon I was Darn Sarf, baking in 23C moaning “no human can survive in this heat!”

On Wednesday it was still quite warm, lockdown is lifting, and I was off, so I took my new bike for a spin up to Workington (top of the Lakes on the coast).