Cycling and the Christmas production

Two major things that have been going on at the moment for me have been preparing for the annual Lake Taupo cycle challenge (160 km solo or relay) and the church kids' Christmas production.

First off, the cycling: I signed up thinking 4 x 40 = 160 km, 40 km is not too bad (that's 25 miles for my US readers). A bunch of people are going up for the challenge (not a 'race'... the goal being to make it to the finish line) and stay at somebody's bach for the night. So it sounded quite fun. Then it turned out that everybody else was planning on doing the whole thing, so there was no relay team. So if I want to do it, it's 160 km or nothing. Or I could start and not finish, but what's the point in that?

I was given somebody's phone number who was apparently looking for another team member, but by the time I got hold of him he'd already found somebody else. So now it's back to square one.

Thinking back to when I did the 50-mile walk with air cadets (which is probably not that good an idea, seeing as it was about ten years ago), I survived that (just) with next to no preparation. Those 50 miles (80 km) took us 24 hours to walk: we started at 9 pm one night and finished at 8 pm the following night. Yes indeed, crazy. So is a 160 km bike ride in the same league?

Anyway the last couple of weekends I've been determined to try. Last weekend (long weekend because of Labour Day public holiday) I clocked up 43 km going up to Harcourt Park and back. A bit sore the following day, but otherwise fine.

Today I went to Harcourt Park and back. Twice. A total of 82 km, which took me just under 4 hours. And boy am I suffering now. It's mildly reminiscent of an event that happened in London: I had a soccer game in the morning, then had to bike half an hour to university where there was a badminton tournament, after that I still had to bike half an hour home. I had to default the last game of the tournament because I did not feel good at all, and was fully expecting to have to find a drain to chunder into on the way home. But I managed to make it back in one piece, at which point everything just gave way. In between lying on the bed and crawling to the bathroom (even after I got to the dry retching stage, I thought I'd better play it safe), I have never felt so far out of (chemical) balance and just wanting to die, not being able to imagine how things could ever get better or be normal again. And once things did get better, a couple of days later, I vowed never to let myself get into that state EVER again.

Anyway today is not quite that bad, but I do have a bad headache and can imagine it's because my brain is drying out like an old sponge. Ugh. And if that's "only" 80 km, how am I going to be able to do double that, in one day? Crazy, crazy indeed.

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On a brighter note (and one that doesn't involve retching) the kids' Christmas play seems to be going pretty well. We've had two weeks' worth of rehearsals (40 minutes each time) and have learnt the songs and next week should be able to finish learning the dance moves. I printed off a pile of scripts for all the kids, and then left it at home. Ah well - next week will be plenty of time.


Another amusing thing for this week: I got my power bill. Last month they did an estimate and this month an actual reading, so because my power usage varies wildly depending on how much I use the heat pump system, the bill for this month was a cute $5.19. I'm wondering whether to frame it and hang it on the wall.


I've also started to make some progress on the DVD of the Kenya trip (slideshows of everyone's photos, set to music, and I'll throw in a lot of the video clips that I took just to make things a bit more interesting). When we were there I said to everyone I'd aim at having it done by Christmas - thinking it would be finished much sooner - but it could be tight even to have it done by then. It's been quite difficult to find suitable music. I wanted to use some Swahili gospel music, so it's a good message even though they won't understand it, but it's very hard to find any. YouTube and imeem saved the day though.