I should be in Dover now. In a hotel with the kids, pleasantly stuffed after a nice pizza and a couple of glasses of wine to toast the start of the holiday. Instead, I'm still in Timperley with holiday plans scuppered by a basic and idiotic error on my part! This morning, after a quick trip to boots to pick up the last few bits and bobs, I came home and started to pack the final bag for the trip. All the documentation was printed and in the front pocket of my Etape rucsack. Only the passports remained.....you can see where this is going. Unfortunately, when I opened up my Daughter's passport, I saw, to my horror, that it ran out about 2 weeks ago. OH MY GOD!!! Frantic phonecalls & an unsuccessful trip to Liverpool passport office followed. We thought we might risk it and go down anyway but then decided against. Colin and two of the kids are going tomorrow in the car - with only my MTB by the way (it is a family holiday and will be good just to do stuff together - I think they've put up with a lot already during my preparation for L'Etape). I have an appointment first thing Monday at the passport office - my daughter and I will then fly from Liverpool to Geneva, meeting the others there. We're going to be cutting it fine - our flight is 13.30pm and we need to be there at 12.45pm. Our appointment is 8.30am - hopefully, we will have just enough time to make it. Otherwise, we're off to East Midlands airport for a later flight. To confirm our booking to Geneva, we need to provide Passport numbers - oh hell, it's a bloody nightmare and it's all my own fault. I could just kick myself right up the arse! The worst bit is that I have to get on a plane. Bloody Hell.
I just hope that when we get there it will all be worth it.......
Saturday, 22 August 2009
Thursday, 13 August 2009
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.
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.
Monday, 3 August 2009
ECG results
After my 192 HR reading last week, I have been more than a little nervous about the return of my Atrial Flutter. My ride on Thursday last week was sound - a short sharp blast with no ill-effects and confidence in my heart's health grew. On Saturday, the story was a little different - I made a really good start and despite really giving it beans on numerous occasions, my HR reacted completely normally. Towards the end of the ride though, I started feeling a bit dizzy, my HR started dropping on efforts and I became convinced once again the the Flutter had returned. It's amazing how when you suspect you have something wrong with you, you get more and more symptoms that prove your self-diagnosis is entirely accurate. Today when doing my forth-road-bridge job of tidying the kids toys away, I stood up quickly and found myself swooning into the nearest wall. Flutter had certainly returned!
So, with grim acceptance of my fluttering fate, I entered Dr Lee's room and explained what had been going on. He listened to my heart - seemed fine. Then the sticky pads and wires were applied to my chest, back and legs and he fired the ECG up. He took a quick look at the machine and then went behind the curtain. I could hear him scribbling furiously - he doesn't normally do that. Something is definitely wrong. A minute or two later the ECG machine spewed out a little bit of paper and I learned, to my surprise and delight, that I was absolutely fine! Ha! Sinus Rhythm reigns!
I'm going to have a 48 hour ECG, just to make sure that my heart isn't flipping in and out of flutter but I can carry on as normal.
The fact that I'm not going to need an operation and warfarin and INR checking and all that stuff is fantastic news. Suddenly I feel really well and healthy again - not a swoon in sight ;-)
I'm also very happy to have the opportunity to cycle in Annecy. Bourg D'Oisans with a heart problem was frustrating so it would be good to have a crack at some more cols. However, I wonder if this is a really selfish of me. My plan is to do the 40km time trial - about 90 mins? I would also like to do a couple of other routes - the first, which I posted last time, a 30 miler, which should take a couple of hours. This is the second route I fancy: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/kml/episode.kml?episodePkValues=3093597 - about 40 miles so probably a 2.5-3 hour ride. That's it for the week - worst case scenario, 7 hours away from the family. I always like to ride at the crack of dawn so that it doesn't interrupt family time too much - 6am wake up and out by 6.30am.
Having said all that, my first priority for this holiday is to have some lovely family time - included in that is some cycling around the lake with the children. Our trip to the Manchester Skyride was great - my daughter said it was the best day of her life. We cycled alongside each other and she said, "I love you, Mummy" - magical & priceless.
Family riding is best suited to the MTB. The MTB has fat, fat, fat tyres, like tractor tyres - perhaps if I swapped them for something a little slicker, I could take the MTB and do my solo rides on that (although I suspect I just wouldn't have the desire to ride those routes on my MTB). On the other hand, judging by the photographs I've found on the internet, the cycle path's surface looks wonderfully smooth and my road bike would be fine on it. But, I'd be a bit more worried about leaving my road bike locked up if we were to cycle into Annecy for lunch or whatever. I started writing this trying to justify taking the road bike but I'm starting to feel that the MTB makes more sense? It's absolutely marvellous that I have the choice; four hours ago I was certain that I wouldn't be able to ride up hills at all.
So, with grim acceptance of my fluttering fate, I entered Dr Lee's room and explained what had been going on. He listened to my heart - seemed fine. Then the sticky pads and wires were applied to my chest, back and legs and he fired the ECG up. He took a quick look at the machine and then went behind the curtain. I could hear him scribbling furiously - he doesn't normally do that. Something is definitely wrong. A minute or two later the ECG machine spewed out a little bit of paper and I learned, to my surprise and delight, that I was absolutely fine! Ha! Sinus Rhythm reigns!
I'm going to have a 48 hour ECG, just to make sure that my heart isn't flipping in and out of flutter but I can carry on as normal.
The fact that I'm not going to need an operation and warfarin and INR checking and all that stuff is fantastic news. Suddenly I feel really well and healthy again - not a swoon in sight ;-)
I'm also very happy to have the opportunity to cycle in Annecy. Bourg D'Oisans with a heart problem was frustrating so it would be good to have a crack at some more cols. However, I wonder if this is a really selfish of me. My plan is to do the 40km time trial - about 90 mins? I would also like to do a couple of other routes - the first, which I posted last time, a 30 miler, which should take a couple of hours. This is the second route I fancy: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/kml/episode.kml?episodePkValues=3093597 - about 40 miles so probably a 2.5-3 hour ride. That's it for the week - worst case scenario, 7 hours away from the family. I always like to ride at the crack of dawn so that it doesn't interrupt family time too much - 6am wake up and out by 6.30am.
Having said all that, my first priority for this holiday is to have some lovely family time - included in that is some cycling around the lake with the children. Our trip to the Manchester Skyride was great - my daughter said it was the best day of her life. We cycled alongside each other and she said, "I love you, Mummy" - magical & priceless.
Family riding is best suited to the MTB. The MTB has fat, fat, fat tyres, like tractor tyres - perhaps if I swapped them for something a little slicker, I could take the MTB and do my solo rides on that (although I suspect I just wouldn't have the desire to ride those routes on my MTB). On the other hand, judging by the photographs I've found on the internet, the cycle path's surface looks wonderfully smooth and my road bike would be fine on it. But, I'd be a bit more worried about leaving my road bike locked up if we were to cycle into Annecy for lunch or whatever. I started writing this trying to justify taking the road bike but I'm starting to feel that the MTB makes more sense? It's absolutely marvellous that I have the choice; four hours ago I was certain that I wouldn't be able to ride up hills at all.
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