Battered, bruised and blinkin' dirty

I went out on Saturday morning with some folk from the Tri Club on the mountain bikes. It was an absolutely marvellous ride through some great bits of trail around the outskirts of Salisbury. It was however - as every mountain biking endeavour should be - extremely mud-ridden. Without even a slither of exaggeration, we were riding through knee deep pits of murky, chalky sludge and it was brilliant.

As per usual I did manage to throw myself off (but just the once) and very nearly took a fellow rider out with me. I dusted myself off and got back on the bike. As I got riding I was aware that my arm and leg were hurting a bit but I couldn't see any of my skin through the filth to make an assessment and I didn't want to appear like a girly wuss so I kept schtum.

When I'd finished blocking the shower up with dirt (sorry Liz) I looked down to find an enormous bruise on my leg and a fairly decent one up my arm as well. I breathed a sigh of relief, safe in the knowledge that I am not a girly wuss.

I made up for the fantastic calorie-burning effect of three hours of mountain biking with lots of food, wine and excessive dessert eating on Saturday evening. Despite that I am still just about on target with my weight loss goal for the month - fingers crossed! I did peer longingly into the vending machine at work today, armed dangerously with a pound coin, but managed to escape without buying anything.

I also saw the physio yesterday who gave me some drills to get me back into the running, but this is definitely going to be a slow process (boo!). He also did a bit of acupuncture after routing around to find the most painful bits of my body. I have had some acupuncture before but had forgotten just how much it hurts, what ensued was 20 minutes of groaning, squeezing anything nearby with a vice-like grip, extreme foot tapping (because this help the pain?!) and profuse sweating - lovely.

In other news.. I am also well on track with the mileage, and have cycled 196 miles so far this month - just got to keep it up! I have a feeling my fun post-work longer rides will be much less regular as it gets darker and colder but with some more mountain biking on the cards for the month I reckon I'll get to the 500!