Day Ninety Nine: Eduardo’s Road To Fitness

Life’s simple pleasures. I was thinking about making a list of them. Riding a bike downhill would be one entry on the list but it can be enhanced. Riding downhill on a bike through the city and having every red light turn green so that you don’t have to slow down and [...]

Day Ninety Eight: Eduardo’s Road To Fitness

The man with the tuba was trying to help two lost tourists with their map. It was an unusual scene, one that I would have taken a photo of, had my iPhone not been tucked into a pocket that was buried beneath several layers of clothing. It took me a couple of seconds [...]

Day Ninety Six: Eduardo’s Road To Fitness

I was 25 metres below the surface, the deepest I had dived to without a tank on my back. I thought to myself, ‘I guess this makes me a free-diver’. I had a quick look around and noticed a Barracuda, poised like a jet fighter off to my right. It was watching me. [...]

Day Ninety Five: Eduardo’s Road To Fitness

Getting stung by a wasp is not fun. For me, it ranks way up there, stratospherically high in fact, in my list of ‘unfun’ things to experience. It is perhaps higher even than shopping in IKEA or changing the cat litter.
Getting stung by a wasp whilst descending a technical mountain road at over eighty [...]

Day Ninety Four: Eduardo’s Road To Fitness

For a moment I thought the driver of the little Daihatsu Matiz was gesticulating at me, he had the swivel-eyed look of a mad man, one that would happily jump out of his car, tear the wind-shield wipers off it and beat you to death with them. I held my line, ready to take [...]

Day Ninety Three: Eduardo’s Road To Fitness

I had not touched a bike for almost two months but this did not matter for I had been swimming every day. I was a smidge over two hours into my first road ride and was happy. I felt great. Lungs felt good. Legs felt good. Bliss. I was [...]

Day Ninety One: Eduardo’s Road To Fitness

Running is weird. On a bike ride, I might never go through a single bad patch on a whole ride, and if I do have a bad moment, I usually eat, drink a bit more, focus a bit, grit my teeth, and then snap out of it. Not always mind you, sometimes I don’t [...]

Day Ninety: Eduardo’s Road To Fitness

Right now I am stuck in Germany for another week. I have no bike. It is cold, it gets dark early and the food is…well it is German. Enough said. I am in a hotel that lacks a fitness centre. The hotel lacks space, it lacks ambiance and it definitely [...]

Day Eighty Nine: Eduardo’s Road To Fitness

As is often the case on a long ride, my wand minders. I mean my mind wanders. I often find myself thinking the most absurd things, or pondering situations and running through all sorts of options and outcomes. On my last road ride I was thinking about life on Mars, about forms of [...]

Day Eighty Seven: Eduardo’s Road To Fitness

A strange thing has been happening lately on most of the rides that I do along the coast. I set off into a headwind and hammer myself silly for a couple of hours, teeth gritted, looking forward to turning around and enjoying the tailwind. The very moment that I turn around, the wind [...]