There are only 55 days from now (29/08/2015) and this year's Ride to Conquer Cancer benefiting the Peter Mac hospital.
With your generous donations, I have reached the trigger level required to enter the ride and I am very grateful to all of you who have supported me again to get this far. As with previous years, I would be as grateful for any donations now as I was when I started. All donations go directly the Peter Mac and their Cancer research program. There is no waste or cost from the charity organisation. A dollar donated is a dollar to the research fund. So if you want to donate and you can afford to, then please do so. I promise to reply in person to everyone who makes a donation.
It has been winter for a while now in Melbourne - in fact we have only two days before spring is officially sprung - so I thought I'd give a flavour of a typical winter morning for me over the last 3 months or so.
Wishing the very best to you and yours.
John.
It's 0445, I've been aware of the time on my bedside clock for a while now. Seeing the time advance in 20 min chunks of dozing. The room is unlit and it will be two and half hours before sunrise. Home renovations mean that we have no curtains in our room, so streetlights, the moon and stars cast some light, but it's still too dark to see much. It's warm under the doona but the air is chilled enough in the room that my nose is cold.
And I'm asking myself: do I really want to ride again this morning?
I listen intently for any sound of rain. If it's lashing down, then I'm not going out. Rule #9 and Rule #5 not withstanding. Wet roads are slippery, car drivers less predictable, visibility worse and punctures more frequent. And the wet makes the cold much worse, especially in the gap between getting home from training and heading out again in wet gear on the bike to commute to work.
This morning there's no rain to be heard.
I want to switch on my phone to check the rain radar. I wonder if I can switch it on without the noise and illumination waking Sandra (I can't, but I always wonder if I can). I reach for my phone on the bedside table, unplugging the recharge cable and holding down the power button until the screen lights up with its boot up sequence. I place the phone face down on the mattress next to me, dimming the glow but risking the vibration of incoming messages travelling through the mattress and waking Sandra.
Once the phone has finished booting up, I open the weather app. Scattered showers, southerly wind, 7C feels like 3C. Sandra stirs next to me. I've woken her up slightly. I always wake her up and I always try not to.
Its 0500. Time to make a decision. I get up and as quietly and quickly as I can get to the bathroom, lighting my way with the screen of my phone. If I've planned this ride, my kit is on the warm towel rail to reduce the challenge of pulling on cold clothing. Putting on a cold heart rate monitor is particularly unpleasant, with the cold plastic needing to be dampened to ensure good electrical contact. I pull on three layers of upper body clothing, cycling nicks, leg warmers and winter thickness socks and make my way to the kitchen.
A bowl of muesli and a quick cup of tea later I pull on my cap, helmet, clear glasses, two pairs of gloves and shoe covers. Filling a drink bottle, I pick up my lights from the recharge points, grab the Garmin and head off outside into the dark and my bike.
At 0530 I start my ride in the cold dark air, shivering until the exercise overcomes the cold air passing through my layers of clothing, trying to ignore the spray coming up from the road onto my boots and up into the beam of my light, creating my very own shower to ride into. An hour and a half of intermittently hard exercise is ahead of me.
Winter sucks.
