On Saturday I got roped in to doing a [mostly] off road 30 mile mountain bike ride. I naively expected a fun ride. Ah ha!! After taking almost six hours to climb a gut wrenching back breaking 7200 feet, through slippery mud and narrow cobbled tracks, tackling unexpectedly difficult technical downhill aspects of the ride, I finally got to the finish line.
It wasn't quite as simple as that. Halfway through the ride my fiance came off and got a bad dose of road rash on his hip. I suspect he was doing somewhere between 30 - 40mph at the time [nutter!], when he hit a sludgy wet bit on the road. He survived. However, his 8" square wound was dirty and full of gravel. As we were coming in to a small village, we knocked on someones door and asked for help. Long stort short, but eventually an old man and two retired doctors patched him up. This in itself was to me a wonderful reminder of how - when the chips are down - another human being can happily come to our aid.
Around twenty miles in, I hit a stone and was unceremoniously bucked off into a nice deep bed of stingers. It was soft at least and, at the time, I had no idea of how much I should have appreciated that.
Six miles from the end I was consulting with God for it please to be all over. I felt a little bit off with the fairies, as I shot down another long hill on the road to suddenly see a white faced fiance staring up at me as I ploughed into him as he waited at a corner. Once again I ungracefully, but somewhat spectacularly flew over both bikes and landing heavily on my shoulder. A man mowing his lawn, on a ride on mower, casually stopped it and mumbed something, which to me sounded like 'are you dead?'. Yep as I said, fairyland was not too far away.
When we got back to base almost everyone, except the organisers, had gone home. We laughingly told them our story as I clutched my shoulder and gobbled down chilly con carne, pleasantly supplied by the kitchen staff. After a few minutes one man came out and handed me a package, saying that he wanted me to have it. It was a £40.00 Gore cycling top. Now the odd thing about all of this is that at the beginning of the day I had picked up this exact top in the exact size and tried it against me. I had thought to myself that I really liked it, but I only had £10.00 on me. Isn't that weird?
For years I have been trying to perfect the art of creating what I wanted, and suddenly I got it. For me, it's obviously more about a feeling than an intention or a request. I have been practicing for three days and so far it seems to be working. For instance, even after X-rays telling me that nothing was broken, my shoulder was still excrutiatingly painful. On Tuesday I had a 50 mile training ride planned with my cycling buddy and I didn't want to miss out. I had called her on Monday morning to say I wouldn't be going. But during the afternoon I 'told' my shoulder that it was time it got better! Suffice to say that I did my ride yesterday and in super fast speed, knocking a minute a mile off our best time. My shoulder did not hurt at all during the ride. Bit sore now though :-)
It's all a bit weirdy woo, but hey if it works I am all for it right!
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