This blog post will be on the theme of fear. Although there would be plenty to write about describing the last two days of cycling, I shall get bored relaying it all. So, this will be a thematic tour of the UK and the first theme I have chosen is ‘Fear’. Fear covers the first two days of cycling because there was much to be afeared of, and because I was too tired to write anything yesterday.
Over the next two weeks, I, and a group of others, are attempting to ride from Cornwall to Scotland. As any reader of the previous blog posts will know full well, I have spent the last few weeks mending a knee injury and have done very little actual cycling. So, you may understand my trepidation of beginning this ride in my beloved but very hilly Cornwall, will a day up and over Dartmoor to follow. For scale, here are the elevation maps:
Don’t they look like menacing jagged teeth? Day 2 (on the right) is apparently the hilliest day of the whole journey. That high bit in the middle with the two little ears is Dartmoor. But these elevation maps lie. Dartmoor, for all it’s jagged steepness, was not nearly as cruel as the hills into and out of Truro on Day 1, or that last pointy bit at the end of Day 2, which just would not end! Dartmoor swoops and flies. Dartmoor will be kind to you if you pick a comfortable gear and allow yourself to get distracted by the peaks and folds, by the bursts of sunshine and moving rain shadows, by the sheep and ponies (who do not care how fast anything in the world is moving), by the heather and gorse and bumblebees. Fear of that big hill which was going to take at least half an hour to climb (someone said) was far worse than actually riding the thing.
Fear of pain has been a big battle for me over the last two days. The memory of getting stranded in Glastonbury unable to walk and the weeks of repair is still quite raw in my mind. These two days have been long and hilly and I could have ended it on Day 1. When the knee started to flare up again after only 10 miles I thought I’d had it. Gone. Should have been sensible and not even attempted it. But, knowing now that the pain is caused by my own wonky-muscle usage and not some greater ill, I kept going and kept adjusting my position, and kept my stretches up. Most importantly, I decided not to fear the pain. Fearing the pain makes all the other muscles tense up and accentuates the wonkiness, and therefore, in a self-fulfilling circle, increases the pain. Miraculously, the pain lessened substantially after the first food stop. Perhaps not coincidentally, we also rode over my home turf from that food stop onwards: my cycling haunts with the Falmouth Wheelers are concentrated between Marazion ad Truro, so we were riding hills I knew I could do because I’d done them many a time before.
I hoped the same trick of bending my mind around the fear would work today, and it did, a bit. But where mind games are not enough, a little top up of ibuprofen seems to nudge the pain away.
So here are a few pictures, just for context, and for comfort that even really scary things are often scarier in your head than in reality:
And here are the actual routes (because they look really far and I’m mighty proud of getting so far!)
ArchaeoCyclist 