The Biking Breakdown

Got home from an odyssey to Cardiff yesterday (rail replacement, local bus cancellation, yadda yadda yadda, scuse me while I yammer on like that boring guy you avoid at parties) fully intending to continue my unbroken streak of biking for an hour.

Then didn't.

For those who don't know already, I've joined a political party for the first time in about twenty-five years. It's called the Women's Equality Party, and I've joined it because it's the 21st century and I'm utterly sick of the fact that an organisation like the Women's Equality Party still so appallingly necessary. Yesterday was the first Branch meeting to which I've been able to make it - hence the odyssey. Set out at 9.30, got home around 7.30, mostly because of a stunningly straightforward journey made staggeringly difficult by British engineering ingenuity.

Anyway, whether it was the insane prolongation of the travel or the challenges inherent in the meeting itself - it was manifesto time, there were focus groups to, erm, focus on - by the time I got home, I thought about climbing the stairs and pedalling for an hour, and while the spirit was at least half willing, the legs were all placard-waving, slogan-chanting 'what you playin' at, fool?!' rebellion. 'Sit your ass on the couch,' they said. 'Watch yourself some Gotham and shut the hell up with all this pedallin' stupidness.'

For some reason, I appear to have had 70s Blaxpoitation legs last night. And if I have one guiding principle in life, it is simply this: never argue with 70s Blaxpoitation legs.

So couches were sat on, Gotham was watched, legs gave self-righteous 'that's right, don't argue with us again' snorts of satisfaction and all was good. Couldn't quite understand why I was so exhausted though, until, on getting up to walk over to collect d from her twelve-hour shift (it's incredibly difficult to whinge about your own discomfort when you're picking someone up who's worked a twelve-hour shift on her feet. I still do it, naturally, cos that's the kind of sticktoitiveness I have, but still, it's not easy) and my wrist vibrated, as though someone had decided to chainsaw my hand off.

No-one had decided to chainsaw my hand off. My Fitbit was going nuts. 'Arriba!' it said. 'You've just walked your daily ass off, muchachos! Congratulations on being Senor Fitnesse. Let us dance the Maraccalacca, the famous Dance of the Smug Bastard.'

So that explained that - for the first time since I started Disappearing again, I'd walked my designated number of steps in the day - 10,000, I think, equating to five miles, and at least double the 600 calories of an hour's biking.

'That's right, fool, that's what we been tryin' to tell your dumb ass,' muttered my legs.

That made me feel significantly better about missing my appointment with the bike. Ideally of course, and eventually, I intend to move to a regime where both the Fitbit and the bike feel the love on any given day - the walking and the biking. But this is the difference this time round - as with the original Disappearing, I'm refusing to obey the nagging instinct to go at this thing like a bull at a gate. This thing takes time. It demands a sacrifice of some lifetime when this was a thing you were consciously doing. As I think one of the very early entries says, I was a kid raised on 80s movies, and the inevitable 80s movie montage, where people achieved things to a kicking rock track, and a year of hard effort was compressed into about two or three minutes of inspiring highlights, but real life doesn't have a fast forward button so you have to go the slow way round. There'll be a time to step things up a notch. That time is not freakin' yet. I know this because of the chatty legs.

Today, I haven't walked nearly as far, but I have just Gothamed my bike-pedalling ass off for another 600 calories. Will it be enough to allow me to announce a first milestone tomorrow?

The first milestone, for anyone not familiar with my propensity to throw myself a typical man-party every time I achieve even the slightest thing, will be getting beneath the 19 stone mark.  Similar revolting look at me and what I did' events will crown every half-stone (or seven pounds) lost on the journey back towards vaguely healthy. To throw my first party, I need to have lost 3.25 pounds from last Tuesday by the morning. Place your bets, Disappearers. Place them now...