for those who follow my adventures!

Well its just over 2 weeks since my altercation with a bit of defective road, 2 weeks in which I've been constantly frustrated by my injuries preventing me riding a bike, yes I want to recover well but it wasn't my legs that were the problem! Nope, I've been putting off trying to ride by my damaged shoulder and hand but there comes a point where further delay is just that, the trauma areas might have attached pain/discomfort for another couple of weeks, waiting it out to be pain free may actually be detrimental to recovery.

So today, I took the bit between my teeth (metaphorically, I'm not into pony play!) and set out to see where I am on the recovery to ride scale. My ambition was low, use the Bristol/Bath bike trail and head for Bath, all of 12 miles away, if I get there great, if I don't, well i'll at least have a fairly level route to use for the return. After a slightly jittery start, some apprehension but I've also changed some bike parts, I was soon riding with increased confidence, the shoulder being less issue than the hand, I made good headway and reached the centre of Bath in @ 45 minutes.

After a few minutes rest I set off for the return journey, rather than follow the bike path I thought I'd test how I coped on some more rolling terrain so took the almost parallel A road back towards Brizz. The first few bits of climbing went well which influenced me to try a slightly more circuitous route, after all I could always bale back to the bike path. Result? well the generally uphill route presented no more problem than a 2 week layoff would generally do, of course I was favouring the hurt bits but I was quite comfortable and not in any more pain afterwards than before.

So, 57km, @ 34 miles with a healthy 400+m of climbing rolled out just at shy of 24kph which I consider to be a huge win. Oh it might take me a week or two to get fully back to pre-crash distances/fitness but I'm confident that I can manage further and maybe a bit hillier than today next time I go for a Womble.

The biggest question now is do I let the hair 'pastel out' or re dye it to something more intense?

bye for now from a happy Maddy