A bridge too far

It looks like I won't make the full 200 miles this time around, there were just too many weddings and days missed. Since Christmas I have run on St. Stephen's Day, the 27th and the 28th. I have done 29km in those three days. Yesterday I didn't get any done because it was too dark by the time I arrived back to Blacklion from Louise's. Today I just haven't had the energy or the inclination to go out and run in the cold. Instead I have been helping out around the house doing some odd jobs and generally being useful. :)

I have managed to cover 264km and almost all of that was outside so I am happy with that. There is still one more day to go, after today and I will try to get out for at least a 10km jog to finish it all off.

I've given it a good go, and I reckon if it wasn't party season I might have made it, but that's what the challenge was and I didn't manage it. I guess this means that I'll have to do it all over again next December!

New bike

Finished building up my new bike on Saturday morning and went out for a spin with Peter and Waggers to test it and see if anything needed tweaking. We decided to go up to Howth and all the way up the hill. Then to turn around and head down to Greg's house for coffee. It was all going well until we turned to head up the hill. I had to stop and fix the gears, I couldn't shift into the large cog on the front. After 5 minutes or so, I figured out it was because the cranks were slipping apart. Got them fixed and then headed off. Had to push it a bit to try and catch Peter who had gone on ahead.

Then disaster struck. I ended up on my head with the bike skidding down the road. Waggers was right behind me and he came off too after running over my back wheel. I was pretty shook up and it took another couple of minutes before I could go on. Made it to the top of the hill with no more problems. On the way down I took it easy for the first section and then decided to push it a bit for the last part. It felt good to be able to cut loose, hopefully I can do it properly next time without falling off!

We headed over to Greg's for coffee and stayed to watch the Ireland rugby match before going back to Antioch. I brought Peter back to his house and helped him to fix up his kitchen. Some more people came over and we watched videos for a bit before I headed out to the van to go to sleep. And to top off the day, I had been clamped! I had one wheel on the double yellow lines because I couldn't go back any further. Gits!!!

It turned out that if I had driven into the spot, instead of reversing in, I would have been fine even though the van would have been in the exact same position!

A run

I jogged into work yesterday morning because I didn't get anything done over the weekend. I only just made it into work. I had a dull throb in my left hip and my left knee was in agony. I could only just hobble around the place but climbing stairs was excruciating. Louise came around and picked me up from work because I couldn't face walking anywhere.

I stretched it a bit this morning and after the sleep as well it was good enough to cycle to work on. It was still a little tender but I could move around. I stretched my legs out a few times during the day and it seemed to have made it feel better. I'll try it out in the pool tomorrow evening and see how it fares to some paddling and lepping around.

Congrats to Greg on graduating yesterday from DCU as well!

Red lights, what's the point

I know, as a cyclist, I am probably not in the best position to give out about people not obeying red lights, but at least when I go through them I've let the other cars go through first. On two occasions on the way to work today, cars went through the red lights about five seconds after they had gone red. I'm just lucky I wasn't about to make a break across the junction to get ahead of the traffic! And not a Garda in sight all day.

You couldn't go more than 10 metres 2 days ago without seeing a Garda when the French president was here but now that we're back to normal, they seem to be hiding again. Is it too much to ask that the Traffic Corps come out and actually do some traffic work. The way things are going, traffic lights wont matter soon and it'll be every man for himself on the roads.

Anyway, enough ranting, I promise the next entry will be about training :)