On yer Bike!

Well, it's been a while since I've thought much about fitness - arrival of a beautiful baby girl last year seemed to take over the entire house and if that wasn't enough the boy is now 4 and a total headbanger to boot... but enough of my excuses. What are we up to this year?

Having soundly won Challenge 40 with a 00:50:06 10km in Inverness - the highlights of which were watching Bruce MacGregor stumbling over the line in utter agony and John McFetrige's (55 min) claim that if he'd known I was only 5 minutes ahead, he'd have run faster. We moved onto Swim-Bike-Run in Nairn for 2011. Novice Triathalon was enough for us to gain the utmost respect for the big boy Triathletes. After being soundly thrashed, my excuse being one of equipment (Clapped out, weighs a ton, mountain bike Vs Lance Armstrong model Trek road racing bike) paled into insignificance as Finlay's wee sister (ok, she had a triathlon suit and something called a transition box) soundly cuffed us. 2012 brings us a new, bigger biking challenge. Finlay often talks about 'threads of performance' and if you're not prepared to organise your equipment to facilitate you reaching your potential, you get no sympathy (being married, it's an unfamiliar concept anyway!). But, he's right! If you're going to run with the big dogs, you need to play by the rules and learn your lessons. Fortunately, a work colleague just so happened to have a Bianchi (no, I'd never heard of it either) Italian, thoroughbred, road racing bike and assorted equipments for sale at a most reasonable price.



You can hardly rage against the gods when they're literally throwing Manna at your head, so I'm now the proud of owner of this wee beauty. It's a totally different ride from the mountain bike (actually I think I might post on the trials of buying a new bike for the technically minded, commitment-phobe) and I really should have taken it somewhere safe to at least get competent with it before endangering my life on the roads around Glasgow, but you really can get going on it too. I've circled up to East Kilbride and home one weekend and had a cracking 25km ride out through Waterfoot and up to the top of Newton Mearns before skiting (51km/h max speed recorded) home on a glorious downhill return leg.

On other matters, I haven't really changed my mind about the components of fitness I surmised in this post . I suppose I'll have to get more cycling specific - if only to get used to the idea of sitting on the barely blnted razor blade that passes for a seat saddle.