The Wheel Deal

Well, I have started what I shall refer to in future as my rigorous training for the climb of Kili. It is alternatively known as cycling to work.

I have been doing this on and off since I started my job in the city centre last October, but over winter it has been an absolute pain doing it for various reasons. Despite being a complete wuss, I have occasionally braved the elements, and it's only on extremely wet and windy days that I opted to take the train instead. More often than not, the problem was with the bike itself.

My bike is a cheapo one from Halfords, which I bought a while back now for about £60. At the time I needed it to get to and from uni, which was only a 10-15 minute ride away. Sadly, my office is now a solid 40-minute bike ride far from my home, over hills and dales, so my poor old bicycle often couldn't cope with such pressures. I have had various problems with spokes breaking, tyres being too flat, mudguards snapping, brakes being incorrectly adjusted, and it all culminated in my back brake completely giving up service a couple of weeks ago. The entire brake had to be replaced.

Well, we finally carried out the replacement procedure last weekend, and I have just had my first complete week of cycling to and from work without any problems. I am really hoping that no more serious problems will arise, so that I can keep this up. I'm also hoping that the weather improves a bit, so that the whole cycling experience becomes more pleasurable.

And finally, I'm also hoping that it will help my fitness levels... At the moment, there are about two or three parts of my journey where I feel that my lungs will explode and I'm going to die. If I have trouble going uphill at more or less sea level, goodness knows how I'm going to manage when I'm 5000m high up!