Jul 25 2008
Day 34
Today was my last day at work before the Summer break. I now have 6 weeks until I teach in front of a class again and it is a break that is welcomed after a full school year. People always joke about teacher’s holidays but they don’t appreciate the stress that is caused by being in front of several groups of demanding youngsters every day. Don’t get me wrong, the job is very rewarding but it does take a lot out of you.
This morning I woke at 6:30 am. and I got together a few items of clothes to put in my cycling back pack. There is not a lot of room so it really was just a change of footwear, underpants and a t-shirt. I had a piece of fruit and set off by about 7:20 am. I took my mountain bike which is normally quite a bit slower than the road bike but I surprised myself by getting to work, about 9.7 miles away, in 39:20 minutes. The last time I cycled to work when I was on my road bike I did it in about 41:00 minutes. So, something is going well. Either I am lighter, fitter or both. The route has many hills so fitness and weight make a big difference.
I arrived at work by 8:00 am and used a fan to cool myself down prior to having a training day. We made quite a bit of progress on planning for the new AQA A Level in Computing. There were leavers presentations and speeches and then we finished at 1:00 pm.
On the way home I chose to ride along the old railway track from St. John’s to Ballaugh. I cycled along the main road until I came across the track and then I stayed on the track pretty much the whole way apart from a few small stretches where there used to be tall bridges but now there is nothing, so I had to go up and down some steep banks. The track was quite bumpy and tough in places. At one point I got a little stuck going through a bog and had to put my foot down and right under a deep muddy puddle. Yuk!
About 2/3 of the way along I got a slow puncture so I had to keep on stopping every couple of miles to pump up the tyre again. I know slow punctures are a pain to fix on the track because it is difficult to find the hole so I chose to just pump up and ride on. The total time for the ride home was somewhat longer at 1:22 hours. I really enjoyed this track and hadn’t been down it, for the whole length, in 15 years. I must do it again sometime.
I had my customary hours sleep around 5:00 pm.
This evening I did my resistance training on the Bowflex. Progress was as usual with either extra weight or 2 or 3 extra reps being added on most exercises. I thought I would have been a bit tired after the two cycles today but it looks like I wasn’t. I may use this fact in the future as I have been avoiding aerobic exercise on resistance exercise days apart from my 15 minutes exercise upon waking.
