#t47

     Yu Jin is beginning to think he’d been too generous in dismissing rumors he’d heard about the Southland. What was the use in keeping animals that clearly couldn’t be disciplined? And what was the sense in keeping such beasts uncaged?

     “Is it uncommon to survive such an encounter?” He responds drily, failing to keep his tone neutral, and attempting to brush a scuff off one shredded sleeve. He opens his mouth as if to say something more damning, when he’s interrupted by a small noise. He pauses.

     Then there it is again. A little--

This stretch of road between Boundary Road in Rowledge and Frensham was under a good foot of water for about 200 meters after the stream running parallel to the road couldn’t hold it’s water.

Further on in the ride this road in Churt was completely blocked by a fallen tree.

I was grateful to be on the Reilly Gradient with the larger 700x43c Panaracer gravelling tyres as there was plenty of debris on the road that I had to contend with also.

So it's been quite a while since I posted anything of much detail on here. Somehow life got in the way and ran away from me, despite a few developments in my cycling world.

In June regrettably I had a relapse of my Atrial Fibrillation. This was a bit of a shock because I'd been 18 months clear after my Cardiac Ablation and so figured I was fixed. It brought me crashing back to earth again a little and I had to re-build myself up again in terms of my training and I lost a fair bit of momentum.

As things stand, I haven't had another re-lapse, and I'm beginning to wonder whether the COVID vaccine may have had something to do with it. It was an interesting time because I also had a persistent headache and ended up in Ambulatory Care at Frimley Park hospital with concerns from my GP that there might be a clot from the vaccine.

Anyhow, false alarm and after meeting with the cardiologist, and tracking my blood pressure for a week, things have settled down and I have had no other instances of Atrial Fibrillation. Fingers crossed...

I spent a week in the Witterings with the family in July where I truly discovered gravel riding (after my roadbike was stuck in the shop waiting for a new brake hose which was on a 4 week order) after I decided to sell my Specialized Tarmac frameset and move all the components from that to my Titanium Spectre.

I looked to rent a bike but the prices and logistics were insane, so I bought a entry level gravel bike (Kona Rove) on FB marketplace and rode to and from the Witterings, and all around the Witterings whilst there, and then promptly sold the bike for £50 more than I bought it for. Result!

However, I got the gravel bug and put an order in for a Reilly Gradient Titanium. It was slated for an October delivery so I needed to be patient. My sheer luck, I found out that they had a batch of Gradient T47 (based on the T47 bottom bracket) coming in sooner. Whilst a little more expensive, it was worth the upgrade and faster leadtime, so I updated my order and the frameset arrived in August.

I then spent 2 days building it up with the old Spectre components, and then a further day watching Wellsy (a riding mate) come and dismantle pretty much everything I installed and re-doing it properly.

As I write this I will have a (2nd) steer cut booked in for tomorrow and this coming weekend have a 2 day bikepacking tour down to the South Downs with Stu and Wellsy. My first foray into this new world, and something I am really looking forward to.

In addition to all that above, Harry (my lad) got COVID, which meant we had to cancel our second week away and self-isolate for 10 days. Arrrrgh. Thankfully he recovered fully, but it does mean I am due some time off and I feel like I really need it.

During this time as well I also ditched the Apple Watch (which I only started wearing due to a work project) and got myself a Whoop. I thought that if I am able to keep track of my strain and recovery better than I have been, it might give some additional insights if AF does re-occur. I'll do a proper write-up once I am a month in. I'm only about 10 days in so far, but so far, so good.