Saturday, July 14, 2012

Royal Ride, or how to test your foot

Joined in the fun of the annual Royal ride from Dapto, to Bundeena on the shores of port Hacking. It had been a couple of months since my last 200 and I was keen to check out how the cortisone injection would stand up.

It was a glorious day, as a meagre two (Me and Kevin) set off from Dapto Station for a loop of Lake Illawarra before heading through the Northern Suburbs, up to Bald Hill and then through the Royal National Park to Bundeena before looping back up via the excruciatingly steep Audley Rd Climb, along the Princes Hwy and Back down into the Park to retrace our route south.

As days on the bike go, this was a beauty, only a persistent headwind frustrating our endeavours. The first 100kms passed without incident in about 4 hours (not bad considering the climbing) though the second Hundred was a bit more challenging, coming back up from Bundeena and then traversing the park to the highway, was pretty hard going. It was about then thaat my foot started to give little twinges of pain. Not too bad in comparison to past issues, but there all the same.

By the time we were back down into the park via waterfall, I was beginning to feel it more and more. I dropped back, started riding more conservatively but by the time I was over Bald Hill and beelining to Dapto, it seemed pretty clear that the injection had not resolved the problem.

Luckily I'm going back to the ortho in a couple of weeks and will discuss the "chop".

Despite the foot problems, it was a glorious day for riding and a hard day out. 200kms, 2200m of climbing and my new much lighter body (I've lost 10kgs in the last 3 months) seemed to be working pretty well.

In other news, I'm about to embark on a lugged steel frame build project, which takes me back to the very early days of this blog and my reinterest in riding.

I never said I was fast.

Mileage in Km 3038