Who said I could walk?

After my initial enthusiasm to be back on the bike, the resultant achy sore elbow convinced me that maybe I shouldn’t be getting so excited and riding 3 days in a row just yet. However with my appointment with the surgeons at the hospital on Monday and my physio giving me some weight lifting exercises (no I’m not learning the Clean and Jerk) I decided this morning would be a good morning to commute by bicycle again. It hurt my elbow less and the rest of me slightly less than last time so maybe there’s hope for doing the recreational race at Mt Somers on the 19th of April after all. I’ve sensibly realised that barring an intervention by supernatural powers I just won’t be up to the sport race. 20 fairly flat kilometres should be doable with a month of preparation.

In the meantime I’ve been doing more swimming and my hubby and I headed over to the West Coast for the weekend to do a bit of walking about in the bush. We had fantastic weather and did some lovely walks, and I discovered that the muscles you use for biking are not the same as the ones you use for walking and that my walking muscles didn’t know what hit them. I was hobbling round like an old woman on Saturday night! Luckily a couple of Monteiths sorted me out nicely.

We did a really gorgeous 3 hour return walk up the Pororari River, spotted some birds and stick insects, threw stones in the river, and generally had a lovely time. That night we got eaten alive by sandflies watching the sun set at the beach a couple of minutes walk from the bach we were staying in. Little buggers. It wasn’t until we got back to Christchurch that I felt the full force of their itchy menace.

Being on the Coast was very inspiring and I have a number of poems brewing away in the back of my mind, including one about the fantastic wekas that frequented our accommodation, cheeky sods. Much amusement was had from watching them sneak into the house and chase each other round outside. Silly chickens.

The second day we stopped in Arthurs Pass and did more walking, which once more left me crippled. Ahhhh, the staggering around after another 2 ½ hours of walking, so amusing to my unsympathetic husband. I did enjoy being in the bush though and despite the sandflies I’m really keen to head back over for more exploring. However this might not be such an easy thing to do in the future as I’ve made the big decision to commit to doing the Alpine Epic. I’ve lined myself up a coach, the lovely Andrew from Hub Cycles, my local bike shop. Now I just need to be able to ride for more than 30 minutes without feeling sick or my arm wanting to fall off and I’ll be away. It’s going to be quite a challenge, but I’m looking forward to really seeing how far and hard I can push myself.

PS: I'll put up a few photos from the trip at the weekend