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The Last Leg

September 5th, 2013 | Posted by Dino in Canada | Uncategorized - (7 Comments)

When Diana Nyad, the 64 old woman who swam from Cuba to Florida, climbed out the ocean last week she made a breathless speech to the waiting media: “I have three messages: one is we should never ever give up; two is you are never too old to chase your dreams; and three is it looks like a solitary sport but it is a team.”

Now I am back on dry land (and face the prospect of a warm bed in Montreal tonight), I hope you will allow me the indulgence of sharing my three messages:

1 you lack nothing if you have enough determination (and M&Ms)
2 always cycle with the wind
3 this may have looked like a solitary adventure but I could not have made it all to way to Halifax without you.

Let me expand on message 3. The last leg of my journey was in some ways the toughest. I was tired, I ached, I frequently went to bed at 8.30pm, avocado had lost its appeal, it rained more and the hills in Cape Breton were ridiculous. If I have cycled farther it is because I was supported by the legs of others. You got me on the road and you kept me going: thank you.

(I won’t mention names but I did think it would be highly amusing to post photographs of all your legs.)

Thank you to the people who hosted me, gave me food, and helped me launder my pongy socks. Thank you for the stories you shared, the eggs you fried, and the kindness you showed me.

Thank you strangers for coming to help. Thank your for pulling over in your car on the hot days to ask if I had enough water. Thank you for the pizza, for the car keys, for turning up on the roadside with a track pump, for letting me sleep in the hut when I was too tired to pitch my tent. Thank you for the small gestures that made my day.

Thank you friends, family and followers for cheery and amusing tweets, emails and blog comments. Thank you for putting up with me talking about nothing else except cycling across Canada for such a long time. (And apologies in advance for the large number of sentences I will now begin with “when I was cycling across Canada…”)

Thank you to all who helped me with my preparation, planning and training. From getting my body (and lumbar spine) in shape to telling me that I could do it when it all felt like too much. Thank you for beautiful practice rides in the Cotswold hills, advice on kit, kit as Christmas presents, encouragement, support and generally getting me to the start.

Thank you employers for giving me 3 months off work.

Thank you fellow trans Canada cyclists for laughter and bemusement on route. Thank you for excellent blog writing, advice and campsite recommendations. For many an excellent moment of s’more toasting, hill climbing and eagle spotting. I will remember you fondly.

Thank you bears for not eating me.

Thank you Cycle with Dino cyclists for logging your trips. For encouraging my legs to keep spinning to follow your own honest miles. Thank you for dusting off your old bike, for cycling to work, from Le to Jog, in time trials, holiday spins, day rides, and early morning wildlife spotting rides. Each mile you pedalled inspired me to keep going. I imagined you pedalling with me and it really, really helped. You cycled 11,724km – that’s all the way across Canada and halfway back.

Thank you web master for creating the coolest blog map and for updating the dinomometer.

Thank you Monty for being a true and trusty steed. Thank you for not developing any mechanic problems that I could not fix. Thank you for spinning in the sunshine and persevering in the rain.

Thank you Canada for an amazing adventure.

Together we cycled from sea to sea.

Oh, and the moment you’ve all been waiting for! What do legs look like after they’ve cycled 7,500km?

The original legs. May 2013.

The original legs. May 2013.

The last legs

The last legs

Last legs from a different angle

Last legs from a different angle

Tan lines!!

Tan lines!!

Leg 3

August 7th, 2013 | Posted by Dino in Canada | Uncategorized - (1 Comments)

“Dino, you’re fat. Get off the sofa.”

This is the way that my loving brother would coax me to the gym.

I didn’t have much choice in the matter. Having returned home from Australia homeless and penniless I lived in Seb’s spare room while I saved up enough money to go back to university. At this point Seb was in the midst of training to become a fitness instructor. I was the live-in guinea pig.

I recall one day Seb took me to the gym to do back-to-back gym sessions. We started with aqua aerobics (we were the only two people in the class under 50…), followed by a frenetic cardio class, followed by a body conditioning class led by Seb. Followed by collapsing back onto the sofa. The only saving grace was that Seb’s ideal post-workout snack was a tub of Haagen-Dazs.

Never before did I know that you could be so tired, that you could ache so, so much and still keep going.

Cycling across Canada reminds me of those gym sessions with Seb. Each leg has tested, boosted and exhausted my body in a new way.

The Rockies: climbing
I loved the mountains. Maybe it was because I grew up in the bottom of a valley but I love hill climbing. You have something to aim for. You know how long it will take to climb. I had trained for the mountains. My legs changed shape a but mostly they just enjoyed themselves.

The prairies: spinning
Flat is hard. Flat meant you could never, ever stop pedalling. There were no downhills, I could never coast. A gear change was a rare and special event. The prairies were a week long spin class. For five, six, seven hours I day I could sit on my bike and spin.

Cranking up the iPod, Florence & the machine, Tegan & Sara, and America [sic] got me across the prairies. I spun 800 kilometres in 6 days. What a ridiculous distance. With their deceptive difficulty the prairies battered my body and reshaped my legs in a way I hadn’t expected.

The forest: intervals
One moment I would be tapping away with the ease and grace of a swan gliding over the water. The next minute my heart was pounding, my thighs burning, my knees breaking underneath. I struggled like a loon trying to take flight as I fought the gradient. I feared collapse. And then… Breathe. Another swift, easy descent and my heart returns to normal.

The forests of the Canadian Shield were one, long (very long) interval class.

I don’t think Seb ever had a fourth class. Canada does. After climbing, spinning, interval training, I still have the Maritimes to go. How will the east coast test my legs?

The original legs. May 2013.

The original legs. May 2013.

3 cycling classes later... My legs in Montreal.

3 cycling classes later… My legs in Montreal.

The end is in sight. I have only 2,500 kilometres to go before my legs and I can collapse back on the sofa with a tub of Haagen-Dazs.

Leg 2: 2,500km to Winnipeg

Cycling across four provinces and two time zones, I have witnessed the gradual and remarkable transformation of the Canadian landscape. And as quiet as the changing seasons, as definite as the cycle of day to night, I have experienced the transformations of my own body.

The Hills of Oxfordshire legs

The Hills of Oxfordshire legs

The hills have become mountains.

The hills have become mountains.

The contours of my body are changing with the landscape of Canada. My legs look different. But more remarkably they feel different as through this journey I have discovered a new appreciation for the interior physicality of my body. The way it moves, aches, bleeds, itches, breathes, and rests.

My hamstrings tighten. My quads burn. My knee stabs. My feet itch from the mosquito bites. The skin of my shoulder is peeling from the southern sun as I head continually east. A single releasing droplet of sweat rolls down my spine. And I keep on cycling.

I have laid flat on the ground, my eyes dazzled by the sun and felt the hot beating of my heart against the tarmac. I have gasped for air against the ice cold shock water. Never before have I cared so much for my body. Never before have I loved it so much.

At the risk of sounding like an inane fridge magnet, I am beginning to appreciate that my body is not the vehicle, it is the journey.

Day 24: Wawanesa to (almost) Winnipeg (142km)

Here I am sitting cross-legged by the side of the road. As I look up I could be just a few miles from home. I know those fields of rape seed. A horizontal band of ripe yellow under drifting cumulus clouds. But scanning the level horizon I cannot see a hill. No Wittenham Clumps. No Didcot power station. No signpost to Henley or Reading. In that momentary pause between sight and recognition my optimism peaks and falls with a slump of the shoulders. I am not in Oxfordshire. I am in pain.

Yesterday I learnt how to keep going – today I learnt to stop.

I woke up at 6am this morning. Given I’ve just crossed a time zone it felt like 5am and the morning sun hadn’t yet climbed over the line of trees on the far shore of the river. The mosquitoes, however, were awake and out in force, biting any patch of skin that wasn’t covered by at least 3 layers of deet and clothing. I was on the road by 8am with a daunting 200km ride to Winnipeg ahead of me. My cellphone was completely out of signal and I felt quite isolated as I plodded alone along the highway.

There is no hard shoulder on highway 2. The edge of the road just deteriorates into puncture-inducing gravel. I find I can’t relax while cycling as I always have to keep my eye out for traffic. The truck dodging that I commented upon in yesterday’s blog post is like a fatal video game of judgement. But every time an oncoming truck passes me the air current it creates overwhelms me like a crashing wave. It reminds me of swimming in the surf: a wave approaches, you can see it coming and count down. You gasp for breath, duck your head and grip tightly onto the security of your handlebars. Sometimes it’s a relief that the wave doesn’t crash on you but glides past. Sometimes the wave tears at your body and shoots a jet of grit at your skin. It has almost torn the helmet from my head.

The only benefit of these trucks is that, like the sand on a surf beach, the grit that is blasted onto my exposed skin becomes stuck on my sweaty sun-creamed limbs. When I next rub in some more sun cream the effect is very exfoliating. Who knew that the highway could provide its own beauty regime. I also am beginning to develop a Heading East tan. As I continuously pedal east on the highway, my right side is exposed to the southern sun. So while my left side glows a pleasant peachy-brown, my right side is increasingly beetroot.

All morning I fought against the heating sun and the blasting waves of trucks. I managed to keep up a decent speed by consuming an enormous quantity of energy bars, water and fruit. But my legs were beginning to weaken. My knee pain was gradually getting worse. I took painkillers. But my knee wanted rest. I stopped for lunch after 110km. It was still a long, long way to Winnipeg.

After lunch I turned north into a brutal headwind. My speed dropped to less than 16km per hour. At this rate I wouldn’t get to Winnipeg before nightfall. A truck whipped past me and the speed of its wind turbulence swept me off the highway into the gravel. I lay Monty down carefully on the gravel shoulder. I pulled out my emergency ice pack and stuck it on my right knee. I cut up an orange, slurped every bit of its juicy goodness and waited for meaning to come back to me. I put some music on my ipad. And waited. The wind did not abate. The trucks streamed by. And still meaning did not come. And the pain in my knee only seemed to feel worse.

image

I looked down. I forgot myself. I looked up and saw that horizontal band of ripe yellow under drifting cumulus clouds. I felt at home. But in that momentary pause between sight and recognition my optimism peaked and fell. I am not in Oxfordshire. I am in the middle of sodding nowhere with an inflamed knee.

Today has made me question why I am doing this. I have exchanged the comfort of my own bed for a thin thermarest. Instead of soaking in a hot bath, I have swam in a glacier-fed lake. Instead of contentedly ignoring the cool air conditioning in my car I have learnt that mosquitoes can bite through bike shorts. Instead of reading books and browsing BBC news I have begun to read the sky. I swapped the office for the great outdoors. I swapped security for the unknown. I swapped contentment for the oscillating misery and euphoria of life on the road. Why? I still don’t know.

Could I have pushed myself another 63km? Probably yes. But I still have another 5,000km to cycle this summer. I feel a bit crushed to have had to call for a lift to Winnipeg. I had only done 142km of what was supposed to be the great 200km+ ride. The pain in my knee is sharp and stabbing. The tiredness of my body is slow and dull. In the last 6 days I have cycled over 800km. And more than I want to push myself to the limits – I just want to continue.

I hope that my lesson for today will prove to be that knowing when to stop is the same as learning how to keep going.

The first leg

June 13th, 2013 | Posted by Dino in Canada | Uncategorized - (0 Comments)

The first leg might not be the hardest but it is the hilliest. Over the last 2 weeks I have cycled approximately 1,000km across British Columbia and into Alberta. It’s been awesome, or as they say in Canada “it’s been arsum.” I have loved every pedal stroke.

I for one am very interested to know what happens to the shape of one’s legs as they pedal thousands of kilometres. This is what my leg looked like in Ruth’s kitchen the week before I left…

image

Analysis: actually already got a bit of tone around the gastrocnemius. No line of separation at the top. Legs are nice and clean. (I really miss those pjs, they are so comfy.)

This is what my legs looked like this morning…

image

Analysis: disappointingly similar level of muscle tone. Miscellaneous and unexplained bruise on right calf. Lots of midgy (ie mosquito) bites. Permanent smudge of chain oil. Legs slightly hairy as difficult to shave without slicing off midgy bites.

Apparently there is some ‘trend’ for high school girls in Canada (and presumably elsewhere) to have ‘the thigh gap’ (ie legs so skinny that there is space between your thighs when your knees touch.) This is absolutely ridiculous. I think it’s horrendously sad that young women feel they must contort and damage their bodies in such a way in order to meet an unhealthy model of beauty. Needless to say I do not have the thigh gap. Nor do I want one.

I’ll tell you what is beautiful: thighs made for cycling. 20 inch thighs made of muscle, bone, joint and love. Thighs so strong you can scale a mountain pass. Thighs with deep tan lines from riding for two weeks in the sunshine. Thighs with midgy bites because the critters can bite through Lycra. Thighs that ache from cycling mile after mile and mile. Thighs that will carry you across a continent. Forget false ideals. What is truly beautiful is the ability of the human body to go and keep going.

I love my legs in all of their lumpy-bumpy-bitten-bruised glory because they are strong and will carry me to Winnipeg and beyond. Here’s to the next leg!