THE GOOD BUCK

There is a book called Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance. It’s supposed to be expressing spiritual enlightenment through observation of ordinary life with a motorbike. It’s twee, home spun, anecdotal, badly written rubbish.

So, a perfect template for this blog.

It’s just I’ve been trying to make small, but fundamental, changes to my driving attitude. Which has made me reflect on what is wrong in the first place.

I’ve been window shopping bikes for a while now. I know, I know. I love my VFR750 and it’s wonderful and will run for ever, etc, but the grass is always greener.

I was looking at bikes I’ve had before and for which I have a nostalgic fondness. In spite of the actual performance of some of the bikes. But they are all old, old bikes now. My VFR is 25 years old this year.

Then I was looking at the new (-ish) Triumphs. They do a rather nice naked (no fairings) 675cc triple. And the odd thing is, they are really up there on the reviews. Class leading, indeed.

I’ve completed day 26 of my run streak today. A minimum of 2 miles every day. I will accept 1 mile at a desperate push, but so far I’ve stuck to a minimum of 2.

The idea is that running every day is the quickest way to regain my fitness, stamina and, hopefully, strengthen my weak running muscles that caused the IBTS.

Before I got the IBTS I was trying to go for a sub 3 hour marathon, and I was fairly fit, so I was knocking out lots of PBs. More or less at will. I went for a 10 mile one and near killed myself. I got it, but when I checked back it was only a few seconds faster than when I was run streaking. So, I know it’s the way to go.

It’s only as I sat down to start this that I realised I’ve not done a blog for 3 months.

I’d just done the Chester marathon, set a new PB, but failed at my target. And it was hilly, which I didn’t remember from last time and for which I hadn’t trained.

Turns out missing my target was the least of my worries. Trying to slog up the hills then sprint down the other side to make up time absolutely battered my knees and gave me Iliotibial Band Syndrome (IBTS –now I’m wondering where the T comes from-), which is a tendon (T?) that runs down the leg past the knee. It gets inflamed by “too much, too soon”, or unaccustomed hills etc. I thought I’d shrug it off, but it laid me up for best part of 3 months. I kept going back to it, doing a run or two, then it would flare up again.

I actually learned my lesson this time! I got all my kit ready last night. I did a trial pack of my helmet and whatever kit I could fit into my backpack. I ended up sawing down an old, cheapo, pair of boots so they would fit in my bag, to save me from riding to the race in trainers. They must be 10 years old, fake leather bike boots. Basically steel toecap wellies. I’d forgotten I still had them. Anyway; improvise, adapt, overcome.

So last night I went to bed knowing all was set for this morning.  The race didn’t start until 09.00, I set out out 07.00. Which meant a fairly stress-free ride to the race, even though it was raining and the satnav took me a way I wasn’t expecting. The first car park was so full it wasn’t even letting people in, but due to my new strategy of leaving myself sufficient time, I just turned around and found another one. Took off my bike kit, sauntered to the bag drop, and had 40 minutes or so to wait for the race.

The difference to the stressfest of the journey to the Outlaw triathlon was incredible. So that was a success.