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 spoil the descent. That would be pretty high up the list. You could add in, having a fantastic view of the sea, a blue expanse of water laid out before you as you drop down towards the beach, with row, upon row of perfect waves lined up in sets just waiting to be surfed. Now that, that would be even higher up the list.

Clearly my mind was wandering. For I was nowhere near the beach, and was certainly not in the city heading towards the beach in front of Poblenou, that, through some sort of magic, had transformed itself into Hanalei Bay in Kauai. No, I was at the bottom of a technical, rock strewn descent, up in the hills near Barcelona. I was waiting for a friend of mine to catch up and was happier than a sparrow with a French fry.

What else would be on my list? The first coffee of the day? That would be on there somewhere, for I am a coffee fiend. A cold beer on a hot day? My list, would contain a lot of food and beverage moments. Not unusual I suppose. A nice meal is a simple pleasure. Being hungry enhances that pleasure and, come to think of it, I was pretty hungry.

We were heading back on a wide fire-road, in the general direction of Allela, to my friends house. All I could think of was food, and, my list of simple pleasures and a song popped into my head. It stayed with me for hours, until I forced it out with another tune.

I’ll leave you with it courtesy of YouTube…

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 to realize that Tuba Man was wearing nothing more than a vest, whilst I was wrapped up like Ray Mears on one of his forays into the frozen wastelands of Siberia. Tuba playing and portage must work up a sweat I thought.

I was on my mountain bike. But was far from the mountains. I was in central Barcelona. Why? Well to be honest I’m not sure. I suppose I wanted to do something different, to escape for a while and at the same time see something new.

It was working. My legs were tired when I had started, the result of a tough off-road run the day before. My plan was to do a nice relaxed spin on the bike up the coast away from the city but, like many of my planned rides, it changed as soon as I stepped outside. Now almost an hour later my legs had loosened up and I was feeling good.

I had decided to ride straight downtown. There was to be no messing about, no taking quiet side streets, no rat runs. Just onto a main arterial route, headed smack bang for ground zero. Plaza Catalunya.

The weak winter sunshine made for a high contrast view of the tall trees that lined the wide avenues. I was riding along the cycle lane, sharing it with the many Bici Bikes, roller bladders, long boarders and other urban bikers that cruised through town. I was in city mode, alert, watching for acts of random motoring madness but I was happy.

Tuba Man also looked happy as the tourists wandered off staring at their map. He looked up at me and nodded, aware that I was watching his good deed for the day. He shifted the broad leather straps on his tuba and began to walk towards the beach front in La Barceloneta.

La Barceloneta is a funky part of town, a neighbourhood in the Ciutat Vella district of Barcelona. Triangular in shape, it is an area popular with those that enjoy sun, coffee, music and food. It seems to be a magnet for the wild and the wacky, and is no doubt a highly photographed part of Barcelona. There are plenty of Kodak moments to be had, from the iconic Peix d’Or sculpture that Frank Gehry rustled up during a creative burst of fish inspired activity, to the wide sandy beach with its long boardwalk.

I turned up the iPhone as La Roux’s track ‘Bullet Proof’ began to play and set off home, pleased with what had turned out to be a great ride through the city.

I leave you with a track, BulletProof by La Roux, its been on my playlist for a while now..

It was hot. I know, for I was slow cooking under a bright blue sky but the girl standing at the top of the dirt track was under-dressed even by Spanish standards. Was it some sort of heat induced hallucination? She had long legs that extended almost up to her armpits. Was that her arse hanging out of that dress? It would appear that upon waking this morning she had decided to do away with underwear and at the same time had picked up a dress designed to fit someone about a foot shorter than she was.

She watched as I struggled up the climb. The sand was as fine as powder, and was coloured an earthy orange, a bit like the heavy foundation that she wore on her face. Ahead of me was a long chain that lay across the road. She was holding a loop of it in her left hand. I wondered if she’d drop the chain to lower it so that I could get past.

‘Focus, Focus’ I thought as my front wheel began to wander. I was struggling to get across several ruts that cut across the trail. I did not want to have to get off and walk.  She bent down and lowered the loop of chain that was in her hand. The ‘working’ girl, (I’d figured that much out by now) was now directly above me on the trail and was crouching down with complete disregard for her lack of underwear, as I battled the terrain.

She was looking at me as if I were mad. Now, I am happy to admit that to some, cycling in the heat of the day may seem unusual but I am not mad. I mean its not like I wake up in the morning convinced that I am carrot or anything. So there I was cycling up the track thinking that she looked out of place and she there she was thinking I was out of place. Weird.

I have no idea who she thought she would solicit on a mountain bike trail but it gave me food for thought as I carried on up the climb. As I passed her she said something to me that sounded like ‘do you want a girl’? I laughed but my Spanish failed me.

As I reached the top of the ascent, the trail swung right. I looked back down the hill and she was still standing there, looking up at me. She smiled, one hand on her hip, the sunlight reflecting off her bright red high heeled shoes.

Tomorrow I shall attempt another route, hopefully I shall avoid the trailside ‘entertainment’ girls. If not, I’ll try to grab a photo

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. Below me, the wall that marked the edge of the reef, dropped away into a dark, purple abyss. It was time for me to head back to the surface. I was trying to keep calm, to be conservative, to make my last breath, taken almost three minutes ago, last as long as possible. The surface looked a long way up and the Barracuda was distracting me.

Recently on a bike ride I thought exactly the same thing. Well not exactly, but the bit about keeping calm, to be conservative, I thought of that. I wasn’t deep below the surface of the ocean in Curacao but tucked in behind a couple of race fit cyclists that were tearing along the coast road, with me for company.

You only had to look at their legs to get an inkling of how fit these guys were; not an ounce of fat, with veins the size of McDonalds straws, muscles that looked as if they were about to burst free of their tanned skin. These guys cycled a lot. I was, quite possibly, out of my depth.

My ride had started out as a sole effort, a nice steady ride along the coast. All was going to plan until I was overtaken at the entry to an intersection by a team of guys that would have given Astana a run for their money in the team time trial at the Tour de France. So what did I do? Watch them race off and continue on my merry way? No. I accelerated and jumped onto the wheel of the last guy in the line. Ten minutes later on I was cursing my competitive nature.

I paid the price for my exuberance and suffered horribly for the next half an hour. I woke up the next day with sore legs and wondered if they would recover in time for my jaunt across the Pyrenees with the cycling club.

We were all set for a ride across the Pyrenees into France. I had a plan. It called for some smart riding on my part. Conservation of energy was the key. I smiled as I thought about how similar it was to free-diving. The only thing missing was a four foot long Barracuda.

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 kilometres per hour raises the bar higher still. Getting stung a second time just minutes later is, quite frankly, taking the piss.

Wasp sting number one was simple. It smacked into my neck, stung me and was gone. I yelped like a child and continued my eighty kilometre an hour descent, teeth gritted. I was just thinking about how long it had been since I was last stung by anything, other than the taxman when – enter stage left, wasp number two.

Wasp sting number two was a little more scary. I was on a long straightaway, still descending. I had calculated that I had enough time to remove my pita bread sandwich from my jersey pocket, munch it and get my hand back onto the bars for the fast left hander, some three hundred metres away. It would have worked out if Mr. Wasp had not messed up my lunch plans.

I was sitting up with no hands on the bars, unwrapping my sanwich when the wasp flew right behind my sunglasses. Total and utter panic ensued. With one hand clutching my sandwich, I made a grab with the other for my glasses and began to shake my head from side to side. I was now just about to enter the left hand bend. Not ideal then.

Just as I began to enter the fast left hander the wasp found a way out and, as a parting gesture it stung me on the side of the face. It hurt more than first wasp sting.

The first rule of descending on a bike is that you should look at where you want to exit a bend. If you look at your exit route you tend to go that way. If you look at the outside of the bend there is a good chance you will end up there. This is of course not the place to end up. It generally hurts.

My wasp evicting, headshaking antics meant that I had messed up my line entering the corner. Thanks to Mr. Wasp, I was now riding in the gravel on the outside of the bend, doing my best to make it around the bend without wiping out. It is as times like these that sheer bloody will power comes into play. “I will not crash. I will not crash.” I thought, and using something akin to ‘the force’ I made it around the bend. It was very, very close.

Apart from suffering multiple wasp stings and almost crashing, my endurance ride was going well. I had, during a brief moment of cavalier optimism declared that I would ride for five hours and tackle the arduous climb to the top of Santa Fe de Montseny, a 21km ascent that would last about one hour. In retrospect I should have spent more time studying the map as there was a lot more road before the climb than I had envisaged, turning my five hour ride into a six and a half hour ride.

It is, however a beautiful route and the climb, whilst rather long, is not overly steep. It saps your energy, tiring you and slowly enflicting its pain, unlike wasp stings which hurt like hell and are instant.

I leave you with a track by, Gordan Matthew Thomas Sumner. Otherwise known as Sting

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 evasive action if he pulled over ahead of me. He did not.

As his car struggled to accelerate away from me on the steep gradient I noticed that it was a rental car. I imagined that he was frustrated at being in a tiny little car with no power for he was banging his hands on the steering wheel, willing the car onwards.

Several years ago I rented a car that was so slow I actually stopped to make sure the handbrake was not dragging. I got out of the car, put the car in neutral and with the handbrake off, tried to push it. It rolled along the road with almost no effort. In fact pushing it was almost as fast as driving it. I smiled as I continued up the climb.

Earlier on I had felt a bit like the guy in his rental car. I was trying to ride quickly up a long, hot climb but nothing was happening. I stood up, then sat down, I changed gears up and down the block but to no avail. It felt like I was glued to the road. After a while I gave up trying to smash myself to bits on the ascent and pretended to be touring. I eased off and looked out across the valley, enjoying the view. A huge blanket of wild flowers lay across the hillside. The sky was a picture postcard blue and Mr. Grumpy in his rental car was long gone. I was alone on my bike and that was good. It was peacefull. Tranquil you might say.

The fact that my velocity was roughly that of continental drift did not matter. Sometimes you have to just relax and accept it and today was going to be one of those days. Having taken 2 months off the bike, and then jumped back into training it was hardly surprising that I would be creeping along the road like this. I reminded myself that form takes time and that one has to go through days like these before regaining lost  form.

I decided to plan out my weeks ahead whilst I cycled. The basic idea was to build gradually and not to rush it. It was pointless trying to make up for lost time by piling on extra hours and extra intensity. That would risk injury and would set me back even further.

I was approaching the last set of hairpin bends when I spotted the little rental car by the side of the road. Steam was pouring out of the engine. As I drew alongside the car I spotted the driver on his mobile phone. To say he looked upset would be an understatement. As his day deteriorated mine improved. I gradually began to feel better on the bike.

The descent was fast and the road was smooth. I took delight in threading the bends together smoothly and at high speed. I have always enjoyed descending and today was no different. As often happens when I am training on the bike a tune lodged itself in my head and refulsed to go away. Who sang it? It was on the tip of my tongue but I could not remember the name of the musician.

As soon as I got home I looked it up and laughed. Recorded in 1977 it is a song that is full of get up and go, unlike me and the Daihatsu Matiz.

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 excited. Deep in the hill country, a long way from anywhere, just me and my bike. No Phone. No money. Just the sun for company. All was good in the world.

Three minutes later the situation had turned from one of deep joy to one of surprise. I watched as every light on the ‘dashboard’ went off. I mentally stabbed at each button trying to figure out the problem. Brakes rubbing? Slow puncture? Mysterious headwind? Trick road that was actually uphill instead of flat? Nope. None of those. My legs had ceased to function. I was ‘pedalling squares’. Power? None. Cramping? No (but that was to come).

It is at times like these that I call upon my extensive vocabulary of profanities. I spiced up my stream of self-abuse with curiously underused words, pillock, twat and Muppet added flair where required. And then I began to laugh.

Laughter helps you know. Anyone that has ever spent time in a dentist’s waiting room will remember the awful Reader’s Digest Magazines (actually they were more of a book). They contained stories about people that left the house in flip flops rather than hiking boots to climb one of the highest mountains in the Himalaya, who were kept alive by eating tree bark and drinking their own urine. The Readers Digest also had a section called “Laughter The Best Medicine”. My point here is that laughter helps when you find yourself in a less than positive situation. You just have to laugh. What else can you do? Apart from wee in a bottle?

And laugh I did. Like a fool.

For the record, swimming every day makes you a good swimmer but it is of little help to you on a hilly, ninety kilometre bike ride. In the same way that leaving your hiking boots at home and setting off in your flip flops is a bad idea when attempting K2 so is trying to substitute cycling training with swimming training.

Lesson learnt. Thanks. It was bloody hilarious.

What a Muppet.

Whenever I used to arrive really, really late for class I would hover outside the door hoping that it was noisy inside the room. I would pray that all my fellow students were standing up, in the middle of changing seats, perhaps midway through a game of ‘lets run around the class’ so that I could slip into the fray without being noticed. However, at the precise moment I opened the door, every face in the room would turn and look at me. The room would plunge into silence, the teacher would give me that You’re in trouble now boy look. It was horrendous.

As a child, arriving late at church was much the same but I had a plan back then that avoided me being noticed. I would only enter when I could hear the congregation singing. Then, under the cover of song, I would slip into a row at the back nearest the door and join in as if I had been there from the start of the service. It worked everytime.

It felt a bit odd returning to this blog, in that I have been away and I am really, really late in posting entries. I thought about quietly slipping back in and posting Day Ninety Two of Eduardo’s Road to Fitness, as if nothing had happened but I thought better of it.

Whilst I was away in Curacao (go look it up, I only had a vague idea of where it was before I was sent out there for six weeks) I spent more time in the ocean than Jacques Cousteau, Aquaman and Nemo combined. I now have gills, webbed feet and have fallen in love with mermaids.

In truth what I did was rekindle my love for freediving, or apnea, as it is often referred to. For the record I think freediving is a much better name than apnea, which, sounds like some sort of disability.

In the six weeks that I was in Curacao I only missed one day of freediving. Without realising it I trained quite hard. It wasn’t difficult to train, it was so enjoyable it didn’t feel like training.  At the same time I hardly lived life like a monk.  I ate well (perhaps too well) and drank more than my fair share of rum and cokes.  They were however, cheaper than water, and coke tastes better with rum in it. Eveyone knows that.

It took almost a month to get back to a level close to that of when I use to freedive over thirteen years ago. During my last week I made several unassisted dives to around twenty five metres and allowed myself twenty seconds of bottom time at that depth. I had become hooked.

As a reuslt I am a bit of a fish at the moment and fish don’t ride bikes very well . I was reminded of this when I began riding my bike again last week. I was creeping along the road, suffering and cursing.  This week, with about three hundred kilometres in the bank I am feeling much more comfortable and feel more positive.  I hope to be able to train for three hours per day and  to be racing, albeit later than originally planned, next month.  It all depends upon how long it takes for my racing licence to arrive from Madrid.  Yawn.

Yesterday I did not have enough time for a three hour bike ride so I went for a trail run. It was a lovely day and my  run took me into a truly beautiful part of a nature reserve.  I ran past giant cactus and spring flowers, that lined the paths and reinforced my happy mood.

Now that I am back I will do my best to keep this blog up to date. I thank you all for being so patient and promise that I shall respond to all your emails and comments.

I leave you with a photo of one of my favourite freediving spots in Curacao. It is a gorgeous spot, one that I miss at the moment,  for I am a fish out of water.

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 snap out of it and I crash and burn and end up crawling home totally wasted, cursing myself.

Running is so very different. I might go through two or three bad patches on just one run. The last few runs have been no different. I have been using a heart rate monitor to see if these black holes are related to moments where I am working really hard. It would appear that they are not.

On my run yesterday I averaged 172 beats per minute and spent a minute over 186 bpm. That happened on a particularly steep incline where I refused to stop running. I felt great at the top end, i.e when my heart rate was bouncing of the rev limiter. It was on the flatter sections of the run where I was working at 164-168 that I entered the pain hotel for a while.

Pain hotel? What is that all about you might ask. Good question. It’s a term I used in cycling when I used to race. I think it was a way of acknowledging that a world of pain awaited. I would mentally ‘check myself in’ to my pain hotel, knowing that for the next week of a stage race (for example) I would have to draw upon some mental reserves to get me through the race.

As a cyclist, if you can suffer more than the next guy, usually it is to your advantage (assuming of course you are at a similar level of fitness). People that don’t ride probably won’t understand. I’m not sure it’s the same in running. I don’t seem to be able to wring every last bit out of me on a run, but perhaps that is because I am not a true endurance runner, so I can’t run for long enough to reach that point?

I am due to start racing soon here in Spain. A friend of mine asked me if I was to make a comeback like Lance. I laughed. No folks. I have a bright future behind me in competitive cycling. I will race with the 40+ vet category here, which is highly competitive. I am sending off for my racing licence today. Apparently it has to go to Madrid which may take a while.

In the meantime, whilst my bike gets built I shall run. My route of choice is one that lasts under an hour and takes me up into the dry and dusty hills of the Parc de Serralada de Mariana. The place is full of cactus with long nasty thorns. It is rocky. They trails are technical and the air is clear and sweet.

Running is weird. But I love it.

I leave you with a track that I was listening to by Calexico. It fits the terrain quite well don’t you think?

My trail run past the cactus

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 lacks a good bar. On the plus side it is situated rather close to a lake.  It is this lake that has been my saviour. It is solely responsible for my sanity.

Travelling is tough if you are a person of routine. I am not referring to someone that has to align all their coat hangers in the same direction, someone that freaks out if there is a fork in the knife section of the kitchen drawer. No, a regular person, like me, someone that enjoys being able to run or cycle regularly. I adhere to a regular pattern when it comes to exercise and being in Hamburg has challenged it.

The lake has helped me overcome the challenge. When you are in a new city, a new country even, it is difficult to know quite where to go. South? How about East? I decided to play around on Google Maps and find out where I was in relation to my surroundings. It was then that I discovered, that, hidden from view by a ring of large high rise hotels, was a large lake -  ‘Perfect, let the running commence.” I thought.

And commence it has. I have juggled meetings, my start times at work and my days of recuperation.  I have planned it so that  I can run every other morning. I am doing this to ensure that I can maximise my running time over my two week stay.  If I ran every day I would never last two weeks and would end up having to take quite a few days off, thereby risking my sanity – so my day on day off approach is what I have set up. It seems to be working.

My run tomorrow is threatened by heavy snowfall.  My fingers are crossed.  My iPod is fully loaded with tunes and  I’m looking forward to my time in the cold winter air.

The lake in the middle of Hamburg.