When I was about a decade younger, in my mid 20s, I remember that I spent almost every weekend on a bicycle, exploring daily trails and treks around the hilly region where I live. Short 1-2hour trails, longer circular routes of about 90km in length and one way stretches of up to 150km-180km, multi-day tours, cross-country tours with a full-day return journey on a train, these things really filled me up with a sense of a time well spent and something wholesome to remember. In the due time I’ll write somethign about that.
The different bikes accumulated over the years: the old-boy Stevens xc, mid-level racing, fat-bike (which I bought on a fad and sold last summer) and a Canyon 28in carbon enduro as the latest addition.
This winter I felt very acutely how much less of an adventure this all has become. During the whole of the winter season I barely managed to get myself out. The process of pedalling , feeling the wind, my speed, speeding through places I’ve never been to, stopping for a quick bite somewhere nice – this has mostly lost its lustre. Did it become routine? Am I turning into an “adult”?
However it is, Im definitely “over the hill” on that front. Lets see if this stabilizes or speeds up downhill.
What I still do enjoy very much though is to bike with my children.
Anyways, this weekend a friend invited me for quick 80km/700hm asphalt ride that we did on ~27km/h pace. I felt really tired, nauseus by energy loss at the end of it (in fact we even had to cut it due to that) but I think its an okay-ish result for a start of the season.
What was really unusual, and why I actually decided to write about it, was the follow-up day.
Now I have to digress.
I have noticed a weird phenomenon lately – people write about it on Reddit too – an impossibly bad, dejected, out of spirits mood and morose head starting around 24hours from a physical exertion, and peaking at about 36h after. Doing some moderate sports, say, Saturday afternoon would literally ruin the Mondays for me. I would drag myself through the day abusing caffeine and carbs, and no amount of cold water or sleep would make it better (if only just a bit). On Tuesday evening it would start to go away, but guess what: Tuesday I’d do sports again and so destroy the Thursday.
Well, fingers crossed, I might have found a solution this time. After very strenous biking on Sunday I took 3x magnesium pills (3 times the usual dosage) and took a long warm bath with 4 cups of some off-the-shelf rosmarin oil-based additive, pretty cheap, and so far I’m really fine!
I would usually have massive soreness after stuff like this. Like for example a 45min Badminton game after a long pause, I’d be sore everywhere for a week! – with that weird dryness in the eyes and the nose, coupled with what would seem to be a mild depression and apathy. But nothing of that this time.
[Both previous days, however, and I almost forgot about that, I took an anti-histamine pill against pollen allergy in the morning. Could that have helped?!]