Between the illness and the fitness...

Somewhere between being ill and being better are the weird shadow-lands of 'not suredness' and that's kind of where I am at the moment. Essentially I'm okay, I have the faint remnants of a cough and that slightly comatose, post illness feeling of not being quite as sharp as I ought to be.

Handy bike and rider stand courtesy of the Ordnance Survey. Thanks guys, right at the top of the climb too, which shows real thoughtfulness.

And on the bike, while I have enough base to trundle along quite happily at a sort of seven out of ten level, when I try to go that little bit harder, push over the top of a climb, boost over some technical steps or whatever, I kind of hit a rev limiter. Which is annoying and slightly disheartening.

And the funny thing is that the ithlete app is drawing an amusing, saw-blade, post-illness portrait of instability. Drops and rises in HRV are more exaggerated and a brisk night ride is enough to send me further down that it ought to.

It's funny wondering if a three-hour road ride is going to be 'too much' and wondering if I'll be able to hack the pace on a local group ride, when I'd normally simply just turn up and ride. And at the back of my mind, there's always the worry that if I do too much, too soon, I'll break myself again, go post-viral and spiral into a rubbishy trough of uselessness.

There are worse times of year to be 'not quite well' - summer for example or when the trails are cracking with deep frozen ice beneath your wheels.

So instead I'm looking at the bright side. Planning on riding places I've never ridden, but really want to - Torridon, Mid-Wales, maybe the Alps or Pyrenees on the road bike, and wondering hard about taking a bike out to Nepal in the autumn. Poring over maps spotting local and not so local trails and remembering why I ride a bike in the first place, which isn't about racing or winning or beating people, but all about just being out there, moving through beautiful places and the sensation of a body functioning efficiently and working hard.

And yeah, going fast too - fast for me that is, I have no illusions about my relative speed. All of which makes pottering through the get shadowlands of Not-Quite-Wellshire a bit depressing. But hey, it'll come.