7.08.2020 Friday's heat wave.

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Friday 7th 62-86F. Bright and clear with 30C [86F] expected for this afternoon. The DMI has a three day heat wave warning. With 32C [90F] possible. An early walk is suggested.

Hopefully I can collect the car from the workshop. I can then start ferrying more hedging material to the recycling yard. The waiting pile is beginning to take up more room than the car ever did.

A very early walk to the lanes was extended to the top of the hill to admire the distant sea. I saw several birds of prey, hares and Roe dear. The gulls were following a rumour of free breakfast to the north. I could see the head of the chain streaming brightly through the dark foliage of distant trees.

The traffic was much busier than at my usual walking times. So I enjoyed the climb over the tallest hump in the prairie to avoid them. It is surprising how easy it is to walk with the bias of the harvested stalks. I usually stick to the spray tracks. Which have been flattened by the huge, harvester tyres and are usually devoid of hindrances. The boots are fine.

Already 85F in the shade by 12.30. 86F at 14.00. I rode a couple of miles to collect the car. Going well. I climbed a hill out of the saddle for several hundred yards without becoming breathless or needing to collapse back onto the saddle. I was never good at riding out of the saddle. Though I forced myself to do it my arms would always give up first.

There is a complete absence of tiredness in my legs. Which feels rather odd when I ride so little these days. Or, perhaps, because of it. I even had the weight of the carrier strapped to the [padded] top tube but it went completely unnoticed.

When I was riding tens of thousands of miles per year my legs always felt heavy and tired. Though I was far fitter for cycling longer distances, at higher speeds, uphill and down. I'd think nothing of riding forty-fifty miles. Perhaps I was doing it all wrong? Not enough rest days. Or not enough recovery rides. I'd just get on and ride hard all the time. Just as I always have done since childhood.

In my mid teens I'd ride flat out across town to get to school. On a heavy, old bike with steel 26" low pressures, steel brakes, steel chainset and 3 Sturmey Archer hub gears. The hills were absolutely nuts the nearer I got to school. I always chased a boy who had real, lightweight "racer" with sprints and tubs, all alloy kit and ten Campag gears.

I'd literally turn myself inside out every single morning to try and keep up on my old £3.50 Hercules roadster. I watched mesmerized as his chain flipped back and forth over the cogs as I buried myself to hold his wheel. I tried so hard that I often felt sick for an hour as I stood and melted in morning assembly. Then sweated right through the rest of the morning.

That morning ride to school triggered something in me. I suddenly had the most amazing lungs and could run properly for the first time in my life. Before that I'd always run cross country right at the back of the field with the weakest kids. Sprinting and track running was what other kids did, never me. Now I could compete with the fastest in the class without becoming breathless. Though I was never encouraged to pursue running. Nor cycling, for that matter.

I grew a foot in a year and a half and was no longer the smallest kid in school. As a small child I was tiny and underdeveloped. So the hospital doctor had me trying to blow up balloons for my caved in chest. Which I never could without becoming dizzy. I was made to walk on the sides of my feet because I had no arches. It didn't help, at all. Camels still queue for hours to gaze in awe at my flat feet.

Ten years later I was still a tiny, skinny wimp until I took up cycling to avoid being bullied on the school bus. I became competitive with no other outlet than cycling. I loved hills and would climb all the hills in Bath. Simply because I could. I discovered time trialling in a library book and would solo TT 25 miles out and back on the Ordinance Survey map. Hills and all! Still on my old Hercules. On 26" low pressures and still all the steel kit. Wearing plimsolls, no toe clips or straps on my rubber pedals. With long, grey and very baggy, flannel trousers flapping like sails in the wind.

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