Oh bl**dy hell!

7.5 miles
2 near death experiences
Bloody cold


Day started badly - I swear to god I only closed my eyes for one minute after the alarm went off at 6am but when I opened them again, it was mysteriously forty minutes later, and in fact, twenty minutes before I had to leave for work. In the end I made it in with quarter of an hour to spare (time for brekkie and to get changed) but only after superhuman effort to get the bike to move any faster than the speed I have now deemed 'glue' - bearing in mind its still got Snow Studs on because I've been too damn lazy to change them out and people keep telling me 'ahhh, theres mair [snow] tae come yet quine! and everyone knows that sagely old people are gifted with second sight for their sixty-fifth birthdays so who am I to argue? My knees and thighs were already a little achy from yesterdays effort (I'm thinking it uses more energy trying to keep bike upright with 18kg of wriggling toddler on the back) so by four miles along the road (quicker) I was not in my usual happy place but somewhere between 'mildy pissed off' and 'tearful'.

Then the oncoming postman tried to kill me by overtaking the car in front of him missing me by about 2 inches.

Then 3 miles later, an oncoming white van tried to finish the job by overtaking the lorry in front of it just as the lorry draws level with me.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu*k!

I am easy to spot, I have so much reflective stuff on I glow like a bloody radioactive firefly, I have three blinking red lights on my rear and my front lights could light *insert name of large football stadium* so why do people insist on pretending I'm not there??? Even the lorry flashed the tosspot van driver as if to say 'OI!' as he went past so I'm not imagining things.

Miraculously I reached work in one piece and actually the morning was ok. However, the afternoon dragged and I lost my temper with Cycling Weekly for having insufficient information in one article and for not being thicker (physically) as I'd read it from cover to cover including the adverts and it was still only 2.30pm.

Then I broke a dish.

Then someone dared to ask for something.

Then I slipped on the floor

Finally 5pm and my lift came (I'm reasonably superstitious and I'd already had two of my three near misses today so erred on side of caution and phoned N to pick me up), I locked up and sat silently in the back of the car with N and Jnr wisely keeping quiet other than gentle offtune humming to Rammstein. By the end of the 15 minute journey, I'd moved from a work-boredom induced coma to silent rage and hated Rammstein, cars, birds, cows, white lines, clouds and diced pineapple.

But if one thing is guaranteed to cheer me up its the sight of my yearly cycling/running mileage totals increasing and so, once home and with cup of tea and slightly gladdened heart, I plugged my Garmin 305 into the laptop and waited for the download. It downloaded but there was a problem. The same problem that happened a few days ago  where after 2 years'ish of perfect performance, its beginning to 'drop' recordings e.g I had it on to cycle into work that day as per normal, recorded it as I went with HRM etc, got to work, checked recording which was fine, reset watch for return leg as per norm. Cycled home and plugged it into laptop to download data but this time, when downloading to 1. Sportracks 2. Garmin Connect and 3. Garmin Training Center (I like to have back ups :), the morning recording didn't show, only the evening. That particular set of data has also disappeared from the watch itself.

GAH!

I can see nothing on Garmin forums about this and so have asked on UKC forums, the font of all knowledge.

To top it all off, I entered my food intake into my food logging program ( 'thrice geek' I hear your cry!) and found I'd gone 31 calories over my allowance. How, I don't know but suspect it may have something to do with the two fruit pastilles and 20g of gingercake that someone made me eat. So of course its not even worth trying to stick to it today and so I did eat the Sweet Chilli Prawn Noodle thing containing 520 cals that N had bought me from M&S instead of the healthy bowl of lentil soup I'd laid aside. I then went on to eat a 'this is not just any yoghurt' yoghurt. I am now eyeing up the giant bar of Green & Blacks cooking chocolate lurking in the store cupboard.

I may, just may have PMT.