Ride Eight — The Wrong Turn Worth Taking

Same track as yesterday. I still managed to go the wrong way, and I am glad I did.

Ride eight of the Cycle the Month Challenge for Prostate Cancer UK was 30.34km in 1 hour, 29 minutes and 26 seconds, with 142m of climbing and an average of 20.4km/h. Just over half a kilometre further than yesterday, on what was supposed to be the same route.

An Hour Inside Somebody Else’s Conversation

I put a podcast on at the start and lost the next hour to it.

That is the thing I like about podcasts on a ride. It is not like music, which sits behind what you are doing. It feels like being in the room while two people talk — you are not part of it, you cannot say anything, and somehow you still feel included. An hour goes by and you have covered thirty kilometres without keeping track of either.

The pace shows it. 20.4km/h average and a maximum of 44.6km/h, and I could not tell you which bit of the track that came on.

The Wrong Turn

Somewhere in the middle of all that I came off the route.

Not badly — just enough to end up on a stretch I had not planned to ride, running under some genuinely tall trees with the evening light coming down through them in pieces. Then a pond, and on it a pair of ducks with three ducklings behind them, entirely unbothered by me stopping to watch.

Two of the ducklings stayed where they were meant to be. The third had other ideas, drifting further and further back, until dad peeled off, went round the back and hurried him along.

I stood there laughing, because I have been that duck. Three children, a Sunday afternoon walk, two of them more or less where you left them and one somewhere behind you looking at something else entirely. You spend half the walk going back for the straggler.

That was never a problem at the time, and it is not really a problem for the ducks either. The walk was never the point. Whatever you stopped for was the point — a pond, a fallen tree, something in the water worth staring at for ten minutes.

The extra distance and the extra 16m of climbing over yesterday came from that detour. Cheapest half-kilometre I have ridden this month.

Better Than I Left

What has surprised me most over the last few rides is how I feel afterwards.

Early in the month the rides took something out of me — reasonably enough, on tired legs at the end of a working day. Now I come back in feeling better than when I went out, as though the hour has put something back rather than taken it away. Refreshed is the word, and it is not one I would have used about cycling three weeks ago.

Same track, same distance, same bike as yesterday. Completely different hour.

A Strong Week to Finish

There is not much of the month left, and there are still kilometres to find.

So this week needs to be a good one — more rides, fewer gaps, and no waiting for perfect evenings. On the evidence of the last few, that is not the chore it might have been at the start.

Every kilometre this month, planned route or otherwise, is raising money for Prostate Cancer UK — funding research, raising awareness and supporting men and families dealing with a disease that affects far too many people. There is still time to chip in, and the last week is the one that decides the total.

Eight rides down. And a week left to make them count.