Quick Catch Up

Sincy my last post, I've been slowly building up riding time around looking after the children and have been venturing out into the peaks again. The cough that plagued me in July, finally seems to have passed.

My significant ride of last week was a family ride in Delamere Forest. I decided to ride over on my road bike, meet the family there, swap road for mountain bike, do a trail with the little 'uns and then return back home on the road bike. Phew!
Within minutes of leaving my house, my HR was over 200bpm. It occured in exactly the same spot as last time - on the railway bridge, right next to the tram station - so a good chance that it is caused by outside interference. I say this with a small degree of caution as I have discounted high HRs before - there was always a location in the peaks that I seemed to get a ridiculous HR (+++200bpm) and I always thought that there must be a mobile phone mast nearby. This location happened to be at the top of a rather large hill and of course, it was actually the nature of Atrial Flutter coupled with the effort of getting to the top of it that caused the spike. (Incidentally, I rode up that hill yesterday on a superb ride with no spikes.)

I decided to carry on with the ride to Delamere anyway, following the route of the 2008 Cheshire Cat and taking it easy. The heart behaved nicely for the rest of the way, even on the hills that I'd really struggled with before the Atrial Flutter was diagnosed.

The trail itself was surprisingly hilly. My poor little 4 year old was really struggling on his bike with stabilisers. Eventually, he started walking the ups causing much frustration to the older children who just wanted to keep cycling. We became separated from the other four and we bumbled along together very slowly with many bribes offered in exchange for his legs to continue turning. I took on coaching role, shouting encouragements "come on, you can do it, keep pushing, good lad!!" At one point I did have to resort to hinting at the forest-living bears who come out after dark. We eventually made it back to the visitor centre ahead of the others, who had got lost. It was a really enjoyable way to spend a day with the family - a rare sunny day and the kids really do seem to love riding their bikes with us (despite the bear threats). I hope we can continue to foster a love of cycling in them - it would be lovely if they would one day like to go on a family cycling holiday.

With all the bikes loaded up onto the roof racks, I still had a good 1.5-2hr ride home ahead of me and I did feel a little bit tired by that stage. We hadn't come in my 7-seater though so there was no choice about it, I had to cycle home. It was a lovely, fast, moderate HR, ride home - a great end to a superb day of cycling.

Since then I've had my 48 hour ECG and now I'm waiting for the results.

Oh, and I've decided to take BOTH my bikes to Annecy as there is space for another rack on the roof :-)

And finally........I dreamt that L'Etape du Tour 2010 finishes on Alpe D'Huez.