Too windy to ride.

Too windy to ride today with winds of 50km/h predicted and gusts usually 50% above that. It's enough to knock a man from his trusty steed. This was the be a week of cycling up the West Coast of Tasmania, but it wasn't going to be a pleasant trip so it has been put on hold for the time being. So instead I've decided to clean up the shed and patch some tubes which have been sitting too long waiting for some attention.

My effort to tidy up my tools has left me rather chuffed. It doesn't seem like much but it's cleaned up the bench and has made my tiny working space much neater and far more organised than it was.

The lazy days of winter

It's raining today. It hasn't rained for ages, so it came as a bit of a surprise. The unfamiliar sound of raindrops on the roof helped me make up my mind not to do that 60km I'd promised myself I'd do today. It's an indoor day instead.

It's not like I'm looking too hard for an excuse. April has been a very slack month for me. We're 20 days in and I've ridden three times for a total of 175km. It's a poor effort, my worst month to date in nearly two years. I've fallen out of the habit of commuting to work. I thought it had only been a few weeks but it's been six. The year started well with a 760km month, followed by 630km and then 550km. That's a graph heading in the wrong direction! I've fallen from 217th out of 5,020 riders on bikejournal.com to 625th. and I'm about 900km behind my target mileage to reach 10,000km by December 31 and 1,200km behind the guy currently in 217th on bikejournal. Not sure what happened to being keen to see winter.

The rot started when I took a few days off after the MAD ride on April 1 to recover from a sore achilles tendon in my right leg. Then at Easter I had a writing assignment. Then a trip to Sydney. I'm not sure what excuse I had this week - laziness I suspect. Hopefully it's just a passing phase of poor motivation. I winterised the bike this morning, putting the lights back on and fitted mudguards. It's time to try a little harder.