finally, some bike training....

HURRAY £1000!!!!!

As I am still waiting for my fellow fundraising females to send me their amusing accounts of their adventures on a bike (AHEM! hint hint) I thought I'd better get on my bike myself, so as to have something 'bikey' to enter on here and look like we are all training hard for the more physical aspect of the challenge.

As a result Sunday morning saw me pumping up tyres and adjusting saddle heights accordingly, as all four Scott's set off for our first ever family cycle! Dougal & I share a helmet between us having decided to leave or other one as a housewarming present to the new owners of our old house. Subsequently straws were pulled and it was deemed that, for that trip anyway, my life was a teeny weeny bit more important. So I got the helmet. The boys were of course, suitably protected and Jack was firmly strapped into his seat on my bike, while Sam choose to ride his 12" wheel fireman bike (with stabilisers).

"Hurrah! Training at last!" thought I.

Errrm. No. That'd be wrong.

Sam has been for the last few months going everywhere by scooter. On a scooter if it suddenly veers the wrong way or wobbles or anything at all you just jump off. To suddenly get on a bike again appeared to be something of a challenge to my wee lad, who managed to 'veer' quite a bit - enough to raise my pulse considerably - and didn't seem to remember how to steer a bike at all. All veering no steering! Thankfully he did point out to us before we had rounded the corner toward the main road that his brake actually wasn't working, so we managed to fix that one without further ado.

Anyway, finally we were off. Dougal in front, Sam in the middle and Jack & I bringing up the rear. We have to go about 200 yards on pavement next to a fairly busy road, and then it was cycle path all the way.

Then we stopped. then we were off. then we stopped. then we were off......

It would seem four year old boys on bikes are as incapable of multi-tasking as the rest of the male population, but still full of wonderment at everything (as is only right and proper for a four year old) hence every 10 yards or 10 seconds (whichever came soonest) we had to stop to examine insects, pedals, houses, the river, a bit of litter, bogie's, the sky, a flower, the clouds, a tree................when we weren't deliberately stopping to examine the many wonders that lay before us the stabilisers hit a high patch of ground, or the back wheel a low patch, the result being a small boy peddling furiously and going nowhere at all.

Lets just say I had plenty of practise in how to ride VERY slowly (this does not involve pedaling, simply cruising by pushing ones feet on the ground) and how to stop suddenly with absolutely NO warning when you finally get up to some speed (if you can call it speed!) Good cycling skills I am sure, but training this was NOT!

We covered probably just under 3km, and including a brief stop at the playground it took us about 2.5 hours.

I think it's just as well the 370km in Cuba isn't a family cycling challenge really, don't you!