My Fitness Program II: Day 4
Today when I was supposed to be running 8km I went biking instead. I couldn’t face running even though I bribed myself with the thought of buying new running shoes. But the shoe shop is off route from the wadi where I train so I didn’t go. Such is the stuff of fitness training when you have convinced yourself not to push yoursefl too hard (for the excellent and convenient reason you might give up the whole program through over exertion).
So biking- and biking is what we’ll be doing in December so it was not wasted. I rode with the saddle high to save my knees but this was unsafe on loose sand. I experimented and found the best height to be about an inch lower than it should be for road riding. The return of control was amazing – I could grip the saddle with my legs when standing up which you can’t do when it is too high. And for skids and wobbles on sand you don’t want to be high and dry.
I went up a new (for me) wadi system which was a delight- even when I fell off and crashed into a large boulder cutting my palm so that blood spattered freely. Out on your own, no one knowing where you are, you don’t want to make a habit of such things I told myself.
I saw a new fox’s hole I’d never seen before and a Barbary Falcon, high up wheeling in a thermal. I am very lucky to be able to ride this place. Something I will probably forget when the next thing goes wrong as they tend to in Egypt in their own inimical way- like when I bought my bicycle and found the freewheel wouldn’t work because the person assembling it had left out a crucial spacer. But to fix it meant wrecking the freewheel and getting one the same wasn’t possible in Cairo so now I have an 18 speed not a 24 speed- which is fine.
The bike I have- front suspension cheapo Peugeot that I suspect was NOT made in France is, with flattish tyres, great for riding up the sandy dry river beds in wadis. Most of the wadi riders take the rocky singletrack along the canyon walls but for where we’re going- the Great Sand Sea of the Sahara- I need to ride all the sand I can find. I should start fat tyre training in June- that’s the plan.
More fitness- I have a chin bar across my office door- good for doing one arm hangs- they straighten out the shoulders a bit and build grip.
Robert Twigger