 | ||
| My Pashley |
Monday after the Sunday Long Slow Run is usually a rest or cross training day. When I'm working in a central London office as a jobbing sub-editor, as I have been for the past year, the cross training option is more or less foist upon me, as the easiest and cheapest way to cover the seven miles to The Strand is by bicycle. I am not an outstanding cyclist, but I do rather stand out if I ride my deputy bike, this Pashley. The dear old sit-up-and-beg bike was given to me on the birth of my first child in 1989. It is heavy and has a 3-gear system that precludes steep hills.
My other bike is a Giant, a mountain bike, which is none too nippy either, but it's much easier to get up Vicar's Hill en route to Brockley. My daughter likes to ride it to school, though, and I am left with this old timer.
Whatever I am riding though, I am always dismayed by my lack of power in the pedal department. Commuting cyclists zip past me, evidently effortlessly. Women on small wheeled fold-up bikes, or tratting boneshakers with baskets on the front, women in Lycra and women in pencil skirts, pedalling delicately in stilettos, elderly women, elderly men. Everyone, it seems, is a faster cyclist than me. I try, I really do, but I am a rubbish cyclist. Needle thin blokes in tight shiny shorts overtake me on both sides. One tutted today as he reckoned I was going too steadily over Waterloo Bridge, where you're currently forced to weave your way through two lanes of stationary buses, because the Holborn underpass is closed.
So my 14-mile cycle round trip through a series of south London parks, followed by the hectic and polluted Old Kent Road and Waterloo Road, probably doesn't do much for my fitness, but does it do more harm than good? Would some other form of cross training be more beneficial or should I just rest my tired old bones in preparation for Tuesday's speedwork?
No comments:
Post a Comment