It's only 2 and a bit weeks till the 100 mile bike ride. My back is behaving. He's taken a half day off work. It's spring ....... and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it.

(with apologies to The Blues Brothers - not quite the same ring is it...)

We did. We hit the road - back on our tandem again after our brief hiatus; off down the highway for a training ride. Short knicks again, and sunscreen required for a warmish day that was heading into the high 20s. (C). We clocked up 42 km including a 5km steady climb, but it was all good. I'd even go so far as to say the exercise has helped my back.

I don't think we'd lost as much form as we thought we might have, but we took it easy. We're being cautious with my back - plus Marc's missed a couple of weeks of riding because of his work trip (and his social life last weekend.) At any rate, we won't be approaching a 160km-in-one-day ride at a frantic pace, so all we need to do is build up time on the saddle. That's the theory anyway. Marc's got another day and a half owed to him (Time Off In Lieu) between now and the end of the month, so we'll hopefully do this again twice next week.

After the frustrations of that stupid niggly back pain (albeit mild in the scheme of things) I'm starting to feel a renewed surge of energy which I hope I'll manage to channel into more than just bike riding. A spot of spring cleaning? Perhaps. I've managed to come up with decent meals every night this week, and even if noone else has noticed, I'm quite pleased with myself in that regard. I've been more on top of the kitchen mess, and I'm starting to nudge at other household 'issues'.

Swimming again tomorrow night, and bike riding both days on the weekend - tied up with official Bike Week activities. We are torn between leaving the girls in bed on Saturday morning, and chalking up close to a 90km return ride on our tandem, or doing the family thing now that they have no netball, and doing a shorter ride with them on the triplet and tandem. The Community Ride on Saturday will finish up at the Bunker Cartoon Gallery for a sneak preview of the Rotary Cartoon Awards exhibition, and we are feeling that we should be dragging the kids along for a dose of contemporary culture. The eldest two are reasonable 'with it' with social satire and humour, so they would probably enjoy it....

... that's if we haven't strangled them between now and then - having just sprung them still buggerising around upstairs two hours after they were sent to bed!!

Labels: bike riding, daily