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Tiny Moments #40 - guilty

Occasionally I meet another cyclist on the valley road. Sometimes it is an opportune moment at a junction. Other times I actually manage to catch a rider ahead. This happens tonight. As I crest the slight rise out of Bickleigh and the road levels out before dropping again to the valley floor I spy the tell-tale fluorescent yellow of another cyclist ahead. On the slight descent and the following flat I’m aware that I’m catching him only gradually, but as soon as we turn onto the first part of the Jenny’s Portion rise I’m on his wheel in a moment. The number 55 bus has been patiently waiting behind me for some time so I resist the temptation to ride alongside and swap pleasantries. Instead I drop a gear and spin a little more gently on the incline, hoping the chap might grab my wheel and ride in my slipstream for a bit. Eventually the bus and the inevitable line of cars trailing behind it find the safe opportunity to pass. I give the bus driver a cheery wave of thanks, though I am sure he will not see it, and glance over my shoulder to see if my companion is anywhere close. Sadly he is quite a distance behind already and I’m enjoying the trailing draught from the traffic too much to ease up. I press on, with every pedal stroke feeling guilty at not having waited for a chat.

 

Tiny Moments #39 - Birds

This morning Green Lane is like an avian obstacle course. Just past the farm a large black crow leaps onto the path to peck at something in the gravel. A bug, perhaps, or a scrap of roadkill.  On seeing my approach it quickly peels off and into the sky with a forlorn final glance at whatever treat it has left behind. Shortly afterwards a smaller black form hops from the undergrowth. This time a blackbird, simply crossing the road. It gives me a glance but is not frightened into flight. Two pigeons however are rather more startled as I round the bend at the junction for Rewe. They burst from off the tarmac like adolescent boys caught sneaking a cigarette behind the bike sheds. Finally, as I near the end of the lane and the relative business of the main valley road, a hefty pheasant explodes from the hedgerow and narrowly avoids hitting my front wheel. For a moment it scrabbles along beside me before lumbering into the air like a heavily laden and gaudily decorated B17. It achieves altitude slowly and then banks to the left across my path, back over the hedgerow and onto its target.

 

 

Tiny Moments #38 - chocolate buttons

Yesterday I happened to glance at the Health app on my iPhone. It was on the day when I’m usually doing more walking around the school site than at any other time in the week, patrolling the corridors and stairwells at lunchtime. Somewhat bizarrely the app told me that my daily average for flights of steps climbed was a mighty thirty six. Thirty six! That seemed excessive and so I had a look at the data a little more carefully. Slowly it dawned on me that the Health app actually could not, or would not tell the difference between walking and cycling! A quick search of online forums confirmed this to be the case. From now on then I’m going to stick to letting my Garmin/Strava data log my bike rides into My Fitness Pal and forget all about the silly step counting nonsense. It’s not as if having a brisk walk around the block allows you to reward yourself with anything more than a tiny handful of chocolate buttons anyway. This ride, on the other hand...

 

Tiny Moments #37 - confetti

After a brief but delicious flirtation with summer, it would appear that April is determined to go out in the more familiar embrace of spring, if not winter. The morning sun that peeks over the hills may be sweet and warming, but in the shadows of the trees and the valley (most of my ride) it is bitter and chilled. My fingers tingle in the cold through merino gloves and my face burns in the air. There are positives though: through Bickleigh I tag in behind a white van and an enormous lorry and trailer that is so high it collides with the overhanging branches of a blossom heavy tree. Pink blossom cascades over me like confetti and the camera of my memory records it for posterity.

 

 

Tiny Moments #36 - buzz buzz buzz

Google Doodles seldom draw my attention but yesterday was Earth Day and I could not resist the little quiz to see what kind of creature I would be. Gratifyingly I came out as a honey bee. Coincidentally, as I head down the back passage this afternoon in a bid to escape some of the headwind (of course the wind has swapped direction during the day so it has been a headwind out and the same again home) a great big furry bee hoves into view in my path. I duck my head to the left and we pass without the tell-tale thud of insect on helmet or casquette peak. We buzz off on our separate ways.

 

 

Tiny Moments #35 - heart beats up love

I glance at the heart rate panel on my Garmin. It reads 611bpm. My body feels tired and sluggish, but surely it’s not that broken? Rabbits at the roadside must think I am adjusting an uncomfortable bra as I attempt to reseat the chest strap. Eventually it starts reading something that looks more accurate. Later, as I examine the data it shows that in fact my heart rate plummeted as I rode along Green Lane, bottoming out at 55bpm. The moral of the story? Technology tells lies.

 

 

Tiny Moments #34 - taking advantage

These days come rarely and it is important to take advantage. A chance to postpone some work until later in the evening and to get out into the sunshine and on the road before 4pm. The temptation to simply head home and perhaps sit in the garden is strong, but instead I turn left out of the school driveway and head north towards Dulverton. Immediately my legs feel tight and I start to talk myself out of it. Just go as far as Cove, turn and head back. No, maybe head on to the roundabout by the Exeter Inn. No, keep going to Black Cat and hook up over the hill to Bampton. No, sod it, by now my legs are not feeling so bad and the weather really is glorious. Trees are budding and blossoming, but there are still lots of fairly bare branches so there are good views out over the fields to the river. Keep going. Through Exebridge and up through Battleton where the flags hang limp, caught in a strange kind of doldrums. Manoeuvring past buses and 4x4s in Dulverton, the wind is back in my face up Jury Road. I resist the urge to push harder and instead ride to heart rate, desperately attempting to stick in the fat burning zone. Goodness knows I need to. And then finally, back the way I came: drifting down the valley and savouring the sun. Two hours and sixty kilometres, near as damn it. I feel better than I have in a long time.

 

Tiny Moments #33 - Meadowland

High Spring or perhaps even the earliest whispers of Summer are certainly in the air. Riding past the Ruffwell Arms and the cottage just beyond I am met with the pungent sweetness of recently mowed grass. It is so all-enveloping and so filled with nostalgic pull that it is all I can do to stop myself from dismounting and curling up in the early morning warming sunshine. Hay fever and work be damned.

 

The delight however is slightly tempered by my current reading of John Lewis-Stempel’s excellent ‘Meadowland’, in which he despairs at those who seem determined to bring the bland neatness of suburbia into the country with just these kinds of neatly mown grassy strips edging the roadsides. The more so as he suggests these strips are increasingly all that remains of the ancient English meadows. Perhaps this is true, but ah, the scent of the mown grass… the scent of the mown grass...

 

 

Tiny Moments #32 - faster

At the start of this year Strava introduced yearly achievement badges. It was a great idea, especially for the older rider, or for the rider who, like me, has suffered some kind of injury that might make it less likely for them to ever improve their personal segment times. Sadly, as a result of an outcry from what I can only suspect was a small but vocal cohort of ultra-competitive Strava users whose every ride was suddenly peppered with too many badges for them to cope with (bless them), this functionality was stripped after only one month. There wasn’t even an option to turn it on or off depending on your personal choice or circumstance. As a result, my rides since the start of February (such as they are) have been peppered with next to no achievement badges. Any educationalist will tell you that this is no way to encourage progress.

 

Still, as I ride home tonight I can feel more strength in my legs, and although my back still twinges with sharp pangs of niggly pain every so often, I am able to ease off subtly enough to manage it. I’m certain I’ve ridden the valley road faster than for a long time, and certainly the fastest this year. Interrogation of the data confirms this is so, and yet there is no tangible record of the fact. Is a little badge that says ‘Yay! You suck a little less than you did last month! Keep going!’really so much to ask for?

 

 

Tiny Moments #31 - silver streamers

Chilled early morning air plus exercise equals runny nose. It’s the law of physics. Or biology. Or chemistry. Whichever science is to blame (and it’s inevitably a triple science whammy), I’m afraid that I subscribe to the ancient ritual of blowing one’s nose into the air, on the run as it were. And so, head turned and slightly tilted, index finger over one nostril, I see silver streamers shooting behind me into the morning sunlight.