A lucky break .. and I am not referring to the snooker world championships!

Well, I have been a little quiet the last week or so.  Falling off a bike onto hard concrete over Easter damaged my arm more than I initially thought.  It was probably not helped by my Kiwi cycling companion insisting I get back on the bike and continue to ride - yes, and this picture is how I felt ( dialogue went something like this - Kiwi fruit "get back on that bike now", poor Pomme A "but it hurts ....").  Oh, to have the support of your fellow cyclists ....

So, after a visit to A&E (some 4 days later, as I am very tough!) and the necessary x-rays, I was informed I had fractured the radius bone right by the elbow (now I know why I could not straighten my arm and why it hurt so much) and resting the arm in a sling was the only thing to do.

Yesterday I went to the fracture clinic at the Charing X hospital for a follow-up appointment – more x-rays – and was informed that I was very lucky with where the break was ('lucky' would not be the first word I would use ..)!  It had not displaced (despite me playing in a couple of gigs over the weekend!) and I no longer needed the sling.  Physio appointment was needed and moving the arm was now the thing to do. 

When I asked if I could do the ride ..the doctor say ‘No’ …so I insisted on a 2^nd opinion!  Finally his consultant (and boss) said I could ride, but I would have to keep popping the pain killers en route, try not to fall off again (as if that was on the top of my ‘to do’ list ..umm? No!) and stop if it got worse – as I could do more damage ..eeek!

So, the ride is back on for the Pomme Anglais .. yippee (I think!).  Just in major ‘catch-up’ mode as the fracture has scuppered my training plan and, unlike the Kiwi fruits, I have not cycled 90 miles so the ride on the 9^th May may well be my first ‘ test’ of a loooooong distance.

Lots more indoor riding and moaning – at least for the rest of this week – is on the agenda for me .. and – (a request for you, dear readers) .. please keep your fingers crossed for me to keep on mending so I make it to Paris sometime in May.. Thank you!

Cyco-logical.. those hills, it’s all in the mind!

Well, today dear readers, I decided it was time for me to up the time I am spending in the saddle and the miles I am putting on the clock to get my head down and do a ‘real’  40 mile cycle ride.

I decided on Richmond Park again, and worked out that if I pedalled 4 times around the park, with the miles to and from home there, I should clock up the 40 miles I should have achieved last week, if I change a habit of a lifetime and follow a training plan (and the wet weather ride to Watford was more like 32 miles for me – whatever would we do without cycle computers)... 

So, off I set.  The morning weather was lovely – not too hot but not too cold and I ‘cyched’ myself up to the fact I could get over those lovely undulations in the Park (again, ‘undulations’ have a more positive impact on ones ‘cyche’ than that dreaded word ‘hills’).  The fact I had only cycled round the Park twice before was a little unnerving ..

However, the Park looked lovely.  Very quiet in the early mornings, apart from the mostly male cycling lycra brigade who all look over 7ft high and ultra-trim and fit as they speed past me at a rate of knots (but I keep telling myself that I will be like that soon .. OK, maybe not the 7ft bit, or the male bit or indeed the ultra-trim bit, or the speeding bit .. but I digress..).

The cycling down the hills was, as ever, ex-hill-arating..

wind at my face and the ability to click to the far extreme of my gears to keep the speed up.

But, as we all know, what goes up, must come down – or in this case – vice versa – and those hills kicked in, and again, am I pleased to have 20 gears to choose from and maybe one day I will hit the right one in time for the right hill..

But anyway readers, that is the short blog for today.  After the ride I have sore elbows and my little fingers are numb (if anyone has any constructive ideas how to resolve this for subsequent rides, please let me know!) and, although I am somewhat anxious that the Paris ride is around the corner, and, of that, Day 1 will be over double what I did today (yet alone that being followed by a further 3 days of more miles than I did today) the fact I have just peddled 40 miles have not yet got me running to the hills, more like singing from the hills ..  

(And Dame Julie says ' please sponsor us if you have not already done so ..'!  Thanks Julie, Pomme Ed.) ..

Bleeding Lost ....

....well actually that should be "bleeding" and "lost" ...but I am getting ahead of myself.  The training plan for this week called for a 40 mile ride (that's 64 kms in really money).  Suzanne had this great idea to ride on the Grand Union canal towpath up to Watford to her friend Paul's house.  And I thought "yeah great idea".  The day dawned bright, sunny and warm, thus continuing to support my theory that winter has been restricted to two weeks this year and Spring has well and truly sprung.

We got on the Grand Union canal towpath in Brentford and set off at pace.  Well ... at pace for all of two minutes until we came to an unexpected and rather high humpback bridge with a 45 degree approach. Suzanne came to a sudden stop ... and I rear ended her. Down I went at zero kms an hour, still clipped in.  After ensuring that I hadn't scratched her precious PearlE she helped me up ... so she could check that I hadn't scratched Lara!!.

Back on the bike.  The surface and condition of the towpath was shall we say "variable" at best and we decided to get off and onto a road when it got really rough, for fear of getting a puncture. As we cruised up to an intersection and stopped, I uncleated my right foot and then proceeded to try and put my left foot down.  Result, down I went again at zero kilometres an hour, landing on the footpath on my elbow and bashing the back of my new helmet on the tarmac (thank goodness for my helmet). This one hurt a little more than the last one, but everything seemed intact so we got back on the towpath again.  We saw a railway station and I asked a man walking his dog which one it was and he said "West Drayton". I said "er umm Suzanne, that's on the way to Slough, is Slough anywhere near Watford?". "er umm No" she said. Then we spotted a sign that said "Slough arm of the Grand Union Canal".  Luckily we also spotted a waterside pub and Suzanne said "I need the loo" (see my earlier blog post re me being the one holding the bikes outside public loos in France on the ride).

I decided that I should check my elbow as it was a little sore and when I took my jacket off and bent my elbow blood squirted out at Suzanne who said "eeek it's split down to bone, we need to get you to the hospital, and you must keep it sterile" .. and then promptly shoved her much used looking tissue into it, before packing me off to the toilet to see how bad it was and to wash it.  When I got back she had got us a beer each, she said it was needed for the pain ... hers!

By now of course we knew that we were lost and wildly off course, so with the aid of the iPhone cycling app on my phone we worked out where we were and a general direction to get us to Watford by road. En route we had to carry our bikes through a closed road covered in mud, climb lots of hills, get lost several more times, and Suzanne got a bit terse (I of course remained the epitome of sweetness and light for the whole duration) but we did eventually get there, albeit about 4 hours later than planned. Luckily for me both Paul and his partner are trained in first aid and have a first aid cabinet the size of a walk in wardrobe.  He cleaned me up and put plastic stitches and bandages on my elbow and gave me a thing to wear to constrain movement to assist in the healing. Then he gave us the most delicious baked potatoes I have eaten in a very long time. His last act of generosity was to plot our route home ... on the tube!  I felt a little conspicious taking Lara on the tube through central London on a Saturday night, but I was so tired I quickly got over it.

When we set up the blog and I wrote about sharing our moments of pain along the way, I didn't realise that the pains would be mine!! Or, that I would rapidly become an expert in inflicting the most damage on myself by falling off at zero kms an hour ... no more please ...