Achievements

Hmmm. It's cold outside, as Gary Numan once said. But outside my house there are no men with hats or long grey raincoat or smoking cigarettes, only snow. And ice. Lots of it. Been like that since last Friday night, which for me has not been too bad because I have a "gas-guzzling" turbo-charged, very environmentally unfriendly Toyota 4x4. Don't get me wrong, Clarkson fan I am not, nor Hammond or May. Given the choice I'd chinwag with bloke Sting brought back from the rainforest, although I'd draw the line at Sting. I do, however like to get to work and be able to drive to my house, so it's handy.

Unfortunately for the Mendip Rouleur family, which currently includes mother-in-law Mendi Rouleur, there is no such escape for them. Stir-crazy is not the expression, let's just say they wanted to go out today. Anywhere, and given their inability/lack of desire to walk very far, Mrs M.R. put in a requisition order on the car. The added complication was a broken-down boiler, which made it almost as cold inside as out.

So I had no choice, really. I sought advice from Skip and Bunny (who is married, aren't you Bunny?) who either advised use of the Kona Blast mtb, or to stay and work at home, but of course I ignored all that and got K-1 out of the shed to do the necessary.

I had to walk the first half mile this AM and the last this PM, and I've commented before that cleats also double up as rather good crampons, so no tumble today. Or on the bike, the main roads, which I stuck to, were pretty good. Ice at the sides, but with relatively little traffic it was easy to keep a fairly central position most of the time. I think the dark was an added advantage-out of sight, out of mind.

Here's Charlie:

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/60373497

I tried to avoid hills, going up was OK, but down? Not fun really despite the joke above. With an overall moving average of over 15 mph today I didn't make too bad a job of it, aided by a very vicious tailwind on the way home which was good. The bad news is Mother in law is having her hair done so I'm riding again tomorrow, and that wind will be a vicious headwind. Better go and get some sleep!

It would be nice if I could mark the Spar shop in Backwell with a plaque, for it was there that the 5K was finally reached. That's a joke BTW. I promise that is the last of it. Although the 11.82 tattoo still appeals, but I'll probably grow out of it. I do think I need to get a bit of humility back into myself though, and calm down a bit about meaningless targets. Maybe.

You see I've been thinking again, dangerous, almost as dangerous as wishing. It goes back to something I said a few weeks ago, about best or first. Cycling is a way for me to achieve something, and this blog is an outlet for me to get the thoughts about it out of my head so I can sleep at night. There has been a lot of death around the peripherary of my life this year, we English don't like to think about all this, but we should. I haven't really achieved that much with my life. Yet.

So 5k miles on a bike is not really an achievement, so things are going to have to change. And it's not about the bike.