family days

Wednesday after work I go to Katie’s Cycle class. I’m on Bike 2. A small Chinese woman is on Bike 3. Whatever class she does at the gym she does at 150 per cent. This little woman flogs herself like no other.

I feel daunted when she starts pedalling next to me, but I needn’t. She’s got no idea about riding a bike. There’s no fluency: one minute she’s spinning at 130+, then she’s grinding at less than 50. Her upper body is all over the place. If she rode this way on the road, she’d be hard pressed to stay upright.

But I can’t but admire her enthusiasm.   

Thursday I ride to work, all two blocks, and home again, but I declare it a rest day because I feel like I need a rest.

Friday I go to the Tom Flood velodrome early. This time I do the field test properly, if time trialling on the slick surface at the velodrome is ‘proper’. Everything is ideal. I have a shit before riding; the surface is not uphill; there is no 90-degree corner; there is no wind.

I complete the 4.828kms (three miles) in 8:15, a minute and eight seconds less than my uphill time trial on Sandhurst Park Road, and only 15 seconds outside Advanced status. I’m happy to discount Beginner as my start point for the seven week program and begin as an Intermediate.  

My sister and her husband drive my mother up from Melbourne to ‘see the baby’, my daughter’s daughter. Nerri is four and half months old and changing every day. I cater, cook and clean for my guests, a rare privilege. And a full-time job.

When they return to Melbourne on Saturday, I hop a lift to Kyneton and ride back to Bendigo. At 1pm it’s hot and my computer tells me it’s 36 degrees on the road. The country is all undulating through Metcalfe, over Granite Hill, skirting Elphinstone and back to Bendigo via Sutton Grange, Sedgwick and Mandurang.

The climb up Granite Hill is short but tough, the other climbs mostly long drags of one to three per cent. I tell myself that this is what I’m out here for: to work hard on the uphills. And I do, although I don’t push past about an 80 per cent effort. The heart rate touches 160 only once, but slips below 130 only on the descents.

When I step off the bike in Baxter Street I’m in a lather and my feet are red-hot, as they’ve been for 50kms. I cover the 70kms at an average speed of 27.5kph.

On Sunday I can ride with the gym bunch to Axedale on the O’Keefe rail trail, but at 11:30am I’m Driving Ms Caitlin, a young woman with a psych disability I take for driving lessons as a voluntary supervising driver-slash-mentor. She’s not at the unit when I pull up outside in the L2P car.

No ride, no drive. The dog gets an extra walk and I ride late on a hot afternoon.