HHCCC!

Well the HHCCC is tomorrow and I leave today for Mansfield!
It is going to be awesome being back up that way for the bike ride, I love the area and I am going to try to get some landscape type photo's over the weekend, especially if I am not riding!
I'm staying with Team Idiot tonight so it should be a dry, quiet and early night... yeah right ;) We probably wont be getting up there untill about 8:30pm though so I don't imagine we will end up doing much and after Connect Carnivores last night I don't think I want to drink anything today hehe

If you are doing the HHCCC this weekend have FUN and the weather looks fantastic for it, much better than the 30+ degrees we had last year.

I am excited about the weekend even if I don't end up riding cos it is a Road Trip!! :D

I love you and I miss you!

I miss my previous best friend Sarah! Really miss her! The thing that keeps us apart is mostly distance - we live on other sides of the city - more than a 1hr drive. She has a family, a beautiful little girl, Mackenzie, and a husband, Jason, and I am, well me. We live so far apart that it is just not fair! I don't know if I have anyone these days that I would call my best friend, and in fact I have rarely had anyone I would put into this category, but Sarah certainly was and I know that she is the kind of friend that when I see her, time that has passed doesn't matter except in that Mackenzie will have grown.

You probably wont even read this, but Sarah, I love you and I miss you and I wish we lived closer to each other! I connect with you more than any of my family.

In other, still shit news, I had to take the tape off my back today, a day early, because yet again my skin became itchy due to the tape. I was also not able to do my 5 minutes on the trainer because my back was sore.

Oh and I love my reversing fridge

All taped up

I saw the physio again today as the pain in my back is still there - I blame my trip to Sydney, different bed, bad pillow (for me) carrying my laptop and another bag, sitting in a different chair for two days, sitting in taxi's, sitting in the plane etc etc. I also have more tape on my back and tomorrow I can start my 5 mins a day of gentle spinning on the wind trainer but if my back is sore in any way at all I am not to do it at all.

I did this age test thingy which tells you how old you may live to be -cough- and I got 95, I'm not sure I want to live that long to be honest! While I am not scared of death, I am scared of growing old and no longer being independant! It really bugged me yesterday when I had to use my road side service to come and change the flat tyre on my car!

The Holden High Country Cycle Challenge aka HHCCC is next weekend and I really don't know what's going to happen for me. I am heading up there with my bike with the aim of getting on it and doing some riding! What that riding is I really don't know. Either way it should be a good weekend. I was originally going to head up on the Saturday, but I am now thinking of heading up Friday afternoon instead. Not really sure what I will spend my Saturday morning doing, but I am sure I will find something!

Sydney

Even slower

I've been a bit down the last few days due to a number of things, but mostly the frustration of my back. I had to go see the physio again today because of the pain and she said it was good that I had come in because all the muscles up my spine and my glutes were extremely tight. The pain is in a different area which is good and bad - good that my lower right back is no longer the main source of discomfort which shows signs of improvement.
My back doesn't hurt when on the bike in the riding position, but it does sometimes hurt when I push too hard through the pedals so I need to spend time on the trainer every day lightly pedalling starting at 5 minute sessions and building up to maybe 10 minute sessions after a week. This means that I wont be riding back on the road for a week or two at least.
It is so bloody frustrating that it looks like it is going to take quite some time longer than I first thought.

I was meant to go back in 2 weeks time to revisit my pilates program, but in light of this recent pain I have to keep doing this program for another 4 weeks before changing to a new one.

I had a bit of a blonde moment today with my car. The steering was pulling to the left quite considerably and I had no idea what was causing it and figured I need a wheel alignment, even though I hadn't hit any gutters or pot holes etc. Turns out the tyre pressure was a bit low... 10 psi! I have pumped it up and hopefully when I get back from Sydney later in the week it will still be pumped up, if not I will be making use of my road side assistance to change the tyre as I wont be able to with my back.

My photo website has been off the air since Thursday and it is finally fixed and it turns out that what my hosting company told me about the Gallery software version I had installed not working with PHP 5 was incorrect - turns out when they migrated my files, some of them didn't keep the right permissions - very unhappy with the whole thing situation, but it is working now and that is all that matters in the end.

Anyone for a hug?

My webhosting company decided that they were going to upgrade my space to to a new server, good, great, whatever. It would have been awesome if they a) told me that I had to change my name servers before everything stopped working, b) that they had fucked up my dns entries and c) that the version of gallery I am running on my webspace doesn't work with php5.

I have managed to fix the name servers and the dns entries but I am still having issues with my webspace and gallery as the latest problem is that even though my permissions are fine, I can't actually upload anything to my webspace - extremely NOT HAPPY JAN! Oh and I am not the only one, My friends site also isn't working which was done with the same migration.

Considering my day to day job, this is a extremely frustrating - how can they implement a change that hasn't been tested properly. If this isn't working tomorrow I am really going to put a complaint into management - maybe I should ask them for a job to fix their testing and change processes ;) (joking btw)

I was saying to someone last night that 95% of the time I am fine with being single and it doesn't bother me, unfortunately tonight is one of the 5%. Shit happens, I will get over it and move on-shrug-. Maybe it is because of talking about it last night, maybe it is from watching some tv shows, maybe it is because I saw my mum today. Actually that last one is probably the main reason. Even just talking to her sometimes, let alone seeing her seems to screw with my head and emotions.

Yesterday I went to Ararat to watch the diamond stakes - the richest wheelrace for women in the country at $3,000! While that sounds like a lot, for that sum of money to be the richest women's race it is a joke, it really is. Congrats to Ararat thought for putting on a good event and a big thanks to the competitors for making it worthwhile going to watch!! Maybe next year I might be at a point where I can compete and not just watch.

I am finding it very very difficult to get back on my bike. It is so bloody frustrating that somedays I just want to cry. Why can't it all just work? Why can't I just got on my bike and it NOT hurt? Why does it have to be so difficult physically and mentally? It is really tough.

There is lots going on in my head at the moment but I don't really want to share them.

Slowly does it

Two days in a row of 20 minute rides and today my back is a little sore so I took today as a day of rest, plus I was rather tired when I woke up this morning, even after waking up 45 minutes later than normal. I have still managed to do my 10,000+ steps though. I will decide in the morning if I ride and walk or just walk, it really depends on how I feel. Those that know me know that once I want to do something I do it, so this easing back into riding is really frustrating.

The HHCCC is in a few weeks and I don't really know how I will go, but I do know that I will do at least the 33km first loop regardless, but I have all day so yeah.

If I am being honest with this blog, I have to say that I am feeling pretty bummed about the weight gain from the steroids. I took 2.5 steps forwards and then 5 steps backwards. It is just so damn frustrating, but I am still trying and sticking to it all.

Tomorrow is another Hallmark Day Valentines Day which for a single person always tends to bring home the point and yet this year it isn't bothering me.

Work has been really busy lately which is great! I prefer being busy to having spare time and it looks like I will be going to Sydney every second week or so, but next time I will try to go overnight because it seems to be less tiring than day trips, especially when your flight home gets delayed.

Fixing up the new bike is going well. I cleaned the brakes and they now work well. I have managed to get the bars off the bike so I can swap them for some flat/riser bars and I bought a chain breaker today to get the chain off to clean it properly. I am actually having a LOT of fun doing all of this. I love taking things apart and putting them back together and with the bike, if I get something wrong I know lots of people who can help me and Stu seems willing to help me with it all which I am also extremely thankful for! :D

Trainer time

Yesterday I took the brakes off the new bike and they are currently soaking in a container of turps and no I didn't put the brake pads in the turps. The amount of grease on my hands from doing that was amazing - so dirty! I still have some grease on my hands that I couldn't clean off. I then tried to remove the bars from the bike, but soon learnt about quill stems and that you need to feed the bars through the stem to get them off. Only problem with doing that is that I can't get the brake levers off the bars! I then tried to take the head stem off and couldn't manage that either and by this point my ebay auction for brake levers was about to end so I had to clean up and spend more money :D

I now have brake levers, well some time this week they should arrive, and thanks to a friend I am getting an old MTB bar from him as he has no need for it anymore so it is all falling into place nicely! One night this week I need to try to re-assemble the brakes to see if I can get them working or if they need to be replaced.

I also need to pull everything off the bike before I put everything on it because I don't like the colour of it and I want to paint it black or dark silver or something with a mat finish - ooh maybe deep dark red or something hrmmm.

In other news I actually went for a ride this morning and it felt great!! My back didn't hurt at all but the best bit was that I didn't spend the entire time worrying about my back - I just rode and it was fun! :D I will have to see how my back goes during the day but so far so good! It is also time to get on the trainer and build up my cardio fitness again!

N+1!

I bought a new bike!!



$20 on ebay! Winnarr!

It is a Hallmark Regatta 10 speed, I think it is steel and so are the wheels so its kinda heavy, but the gears all seem to work. The wheels need a little bit of truing and new tyres and tubes.
I am also going to replace the brakes and change the bars to risers to help with the reach as the frame is a tad bit bigger than ideal, I can only _just_ stand over it, but for what I am wanting to use it for it will be all good. I will probably also swap the pedals for my ones with toe clips and might put my pannier rack on it too. I might also re-paint it, not sure yet

Perfect Shopper/Pub bike! :D

More photo's

Sleepy

I have certainly had the full range of symptoms this time from the prednisolone so I am extremely glad that yesterday was the last day I had to take it. In the past week (few days) I have seriously gained 4-5kg's, which is extremely frustrating and depressing considering all the walking I am doing. It should just all be fluid retention so will go away easily enough, but it's still really annoying when I am going to Sydney tomorrow for work and my clothes don't feel very comfortable and I try to wear nicer clothes when I travel for work.

I had a rental inspection last night and the landlord(lady?) is umm interesting. She seemed unimpressed about stupid things, like the number of people on the lease - umm yeah one, just me - you can see the other two rooms are empty and that I am here alone, does it really matter if one person is on the lease if the rent is being paid and is always on time? She also got agro about a wooden pellet being in the backyard 'You take that with you when you move!!!!!' umm errr yeah I wasn't going to leave it (it was left by my old housemate) and who said anything about me moving out? She also didn't like how one of the empty rooms didn't have a light bulb - wtf?? When we moved in the house barely had any light bulbs so we bought most of them and then when my housemate moved out she took some with her - big deal, its a light bulb. I pointed out the paint flaking from the bathroom ceiling above the shower all around the fan and her answer was 'open the window even further' Well it is already open a few cm's and any further and its freezing whenever I get out of the shower to dry myself, yet the flaking paintwork didn't seem to bother her anywhere near as much as the other things - odd! I could hear her talking to the estate agent in greek all the way down the driveway and she seemed really quite upset and agro, she also tried to speak to him in only greek during the inspection which the estate agent seemed quite uncomfortable about. I was really not impressed with the way she made me feel, she had a very accusational tone and I didn't appreciate it at all. I called the estate agent today but he was on the phone and naturally he hasn't called me back.

I need a nana nap.

I hate Tuesday mornings

I actually rode my bike this morning! Yup, 20 minutes, 8km's followed by a 30 minute walk. My back was a bit sore during the ride and I didn't enjoy the ride as much as I should have because I was worrying/concentrating on how my back was feeling. It is a start though and I need to do little bits regularly so my back can get used to it.

When the alarm went off at 5:30am this morning I reset it and then I laid in bed and just told myself to get up! I don't know why, but I find it harder to get up on Tuesday mornings than on Monday mornings.

I am trying to get a bit more a structure into my exercise, especially the getting on the bike bit, so to help me keep track ofit a bit better I have created a new blog which I am going to try to keep updated most days with at least my daily step count, time on the bike (if any) and how it felt etc - pretty boring stuff that I didn't want to fill this one up with.

Medical induced emotional roller coaster?

I just realised I am meant to be donating blood tomorrow, and then figured I probably can't due to the medication I am taking, so I called them and I am not allowed to donate for 4 weeks after taking prednisolone so tomorrow is out of the question.

I have also been thinking and I may not be PMS'ing, think about it - I am taking ventolin 4 x 2 puffs a day at the moment, which on its own can make be feel a bit whacky with the adrenaline overload and the shakes that come with it, combine that with the prednisolone (steroids) which can cause mood swings, increased appetite, nausea, irritability and mood swings - all of which I have been experiencing the past few days, how the hell would I know if it was PMS'ing or not?!? Bloody hell, no wonder my weekend was quite an emotional roller coaster.

Good thing I made the decision during my walk this morning to just step back a bit and view from a far for a few days.

Oh and I had a massive chocolate cake craving earlier today and the cake I bought to quench this craving was just the ticket - YUM!! :D

Back to normal programming

I got up at 5:30am this morning and went for my walk and all was right with the world again :D I really LOVE being up and about at that time of the day, when it is still dark and you can see the stars in the sky :D

Another thing

While I am at it and getting things said, I am sick and tired of people just telling me to get on my bike and ride! I have an injury and do you really think that I don't want to be riding my bike?!? Yes there are times when I have self confidence issues about being on the bike, but please do not forget that I have pretty much been off the bike since the August/September due to my back! Some people just don't seem to get the extent of my injury. When it hurts to get out of bed in the morning and then it hurts to sit down on a surface that isn't padded and it hurts to bend down to pick something up and I can't even arch my back backwards in anyway because it hurts too much - I am not going to risk making it worse by riding my bike!! I am doing what I can to improve it so please, stop with the advice, stop telling me I should be doing this or that, I am doing what I think I should be doing and it seems to be making some kind of headway, well until I push the envelope too far, but you know sometimes you need to push it to far to remember and to realise not to rush a healing process that could take a while.

I appreciate the encouragement my friends are giving me to get back on the bike, and as I have previously mentioned it can be difficult, but I also need to be sensible about it all and listen to what my body is telling me.

Almost had enough

While I have had an enjoyable weekend it has also been really crap mentally and physically when hurting my back again yesterday prevented me from riding today, combine that with PMS'ing and you don't get a great combination of thoughts for an evening spent alone.
I have been accused of having someone beat the humour out of me lately - to that person Grow TFU and try to come to get your head around the concept that because you see something a certain way, doesn't mean the rest of the world does and the rest of the world doesn't always or have to agree with you, and mostly don't. Rules are rules, deal with it.
I am also really getting sick of dickheads on the internet who resort to personal attacks - play the ball and not the man. Yeah I am not in a great mood - can you tell? heh but I don't care because this is my blog and I will bloody well say what I want to and when I want to, so while I am at it, there are a bunch of people recently who have put a massive dent into a great environment and community and I am almost over it. Not everything needs to be a competition, not everything needs to be a 'I win you lose' and when someone posts something about them, stop bringing the subject back to you all the bloody time!! If you haven't liked the way I am since you joined, that is your problem, not mine, if you find my posts confusing, again that is your problem and not mine. Oh and if you don't get something that is an 'in-joke' then how about trying to look it up and don't blame me for you not getting it, oh and stop being so bloody precious! I could go on more, but what is the point in wasting the time in doing so because really, it has already taken up too much space and time in here, sometimes things just need to be said though.

I don't normally let loose like this on here, and yet I have still be quite restrained,, but maybe it is time that I go back to when I started this blog and write what _I_ want to write regardless of hurting people's feelings - after all this is my space to ramble on about whatever I want to, so suck it up princess if you can't handle it and move on.

You know what, I feel better now for venting and tomorrow is a new day and I will wake up fresh at 5:30am and go for my walk and start a new week with a smile on my face :D (or I will at least try to!)

Not on my bike

My plan for this morning was to go for a ride down to the SKCC crits to participate in the Coffee Crit that CSV have organised to introduce women into crit racing. Unfortunately thought I am sitting at my laptop typing this instead of getting ready to ride down there.
Yesterday I discovered why my Physio told me at the start of the year to not do any housework or repetitive bending. First off was just a load of washing that I hung out on the clothes line, which you would think is no big deal. I also decided that I needed to clean up a bit as I have a house inspection on Tuesday. By cleaning up, all I wanted to do was to clear up some things from the floor, old junk mail, some books, dvd's etc etc so I could vacuum. So I did and this, as it turns out, it was a bad idea. My back was sore afterwards, but I had hope that if I took some Nurofen Plus and got a good nights sleep that there wouldn't be any pain this morning. Wrong! While it might be OK even if I do get on the bike this morning, I am not going to risk making it worse just in case.

So even though my back has felt reasonably good all week and when I swept and mopped the kitchen floor last week it didn't bother my back at all, I certainly did too much yesterday and now I am in pain again and I just hope that if I do a fair bit of gentle walking today it will feel better later today/tomorrow.

I am so angry with myself for this, angry because I can't even bloody vacuum w/out ending up in pain and angry because I can't get on the bike today and I have been looking forward to it all week!

Savings, what savings?

Today I finally went to the Dr's about the annoying cough I have had for 2-3 months and the bit that kicked me in the bum to do something about it was because it is now affecting my asthma. My asthma has gotten to the point where I am no longer leaving the house w/out my ventolin on me which is something I haven't had to do for well over 5 years. 10 minutes into my walk yesterday morning I needed to head home to take ventolin.

About $120 later, I came home with steroids to take for 5 days, antibiotics to take for 5 days, antihistamines to take for 2 weeks, I have to keep taking my preventative at double the dose twice a day like I have been and I need to take 4 x 2 puffs of ventolin each day. I also need to try to breathe more through my nose, especially when exercising, and so to assist with that I need to do a steam thing to inhale. The Dr also suggested that I try to sleep on an slant so that my head is higher than my chest - not quite sure how I will manage that though.

Good thing I am not racing or anything due to lack of fitness/back injury seeing as I am on _real_ steroids, as opposed to my preventative which is approved if I get my Dr to sign the forms - must do this before I start racing later in the year!

If all this doesn't work then I need to give a phlegm sample to pathology to be tested - erks!

One day I may not have any health issues, I hope it is one day soon because, apart from the obvious, I know that my bank account sure is suffering lately.