Woke up this morning, and my legs felt stiffer than Chris Hoy’s trackbike frame. Good news was after 3 days of reasonably solid hill-walking in big boots and rucksack there was actually no real pain or problems with the knee. I was expecting the odd twinge, especially sleeping in a tent, on a simple self-inflating groundmat but wooo-hooo!!! nothing. Any stiffness and aching was pretty much what would be expected from someone who’s basically 50 years old and not exactly hill-fit. There’s a certain very specific kind of fitness that comes with time spent in the hills – mainly in the easy measured way of descending the rocky bits – and that’s pretty much what I was missing for the first couple of days. I’m actually putting a fair bit of the problem down to the fact that my centre of gravity and weight distribution were very different to what I’ve spent the prior 10-15 years on the hills coping with, and I’ve had to re-learn. Towards the back end of the bigger walk, it began to come together a bit, and I’m looking forward to another bash once we get past the bank holiday…
Anyhooo – Back to todays ride – pretty much the standard local loop I’d say – wooden legs or not – and moving time was still around 2:00:00 for the 48.1km, so I wasn’t a complete spanner!
