Part 1 – what were you thinking??

“Oh you poor fu**ing bas***d!”  

Please pardon my French but you will agree that that now is a very relevant and succinct phrase that captures the essence of being a new father. If you thought that the last nine months were a trial, then you better buy yourself an extra-large serving of patience. To make it easy for everyone, I am going to divide this post into very manageable pieces

Oh so cute! - Now that is the first thought that comes to anyone’s mind while looking at any baby. Ya ya I know he/she is your precious and no other kid can come close yada yada… but isn’t that what every parent thinks?

Black and white - Once the show off period is over (you know what I mean. Relatives, friends, the mandatory Johnson’s baby gift pack, pics on your blog and Facebook and so on) things begin to get nastyJ. Black, dark green, yellow, semi-solid, viscous… You get the picture? No??? Well that’s what you need to go through if you need your diaper changing certificate! What’s white you ask? Now that is what I call the curd like stuff that is regurgitated

Lights out=Nights out! – Lots of bottles, lots of noise, frantic searching, pulling and wrapping but it not your party!  

Bottles and more – this probably is what they meant when they said ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’. Imagine this. Its 10 PM and after a long day at work (who are you kidding?) you just want to watch the highlights of the test match with a bottle of something. And then it happens. The exact means is hard to nail down but in the end you find yourself looking at a line of unwashed feeding bottles. Oh that’s not half of it…the worst part is the sterilization. If you haven’t done it, you don’t know what I mean.

 Do I look fat? – Normally, that question will make any man pause the T.V in his head and take notice of where he is and what’s around him. But post pregnancy, that question is an invitation to commit harakiri. There is no right answer to that question because something or the other doesn’t fit!

And this is just the beginning…

P.S:  I did do all the above and feel that it’s good to be involved with your kid right from day one. Nothing can replace the joy of being smiled at and hugged by little hands. But who says that I can’t crib about all the work?

And she is buying a stairway to heaven….

It’s strange how death eats its way into life, leaving everything undone

Beginnings fade away like old cobwebs and endings begin to stay.

A child weeps for the warmth of his mother, not understanding that she climbs the stairs

While a mother sobs into her pillow, knowing that her little darling isn’t there

But what should I say to the shadow of a memory?

But what should I say to the silence around?

With threads of hope we string along our lives, only to leave it all undone.

Century ride!

Prologue - I am 6 feet tall and at-least 35 kg overweight with most of it sitting snugly around my midriff, loved to cycle as a kid and some reading just took me back to those careless days. After a month of dilly dallying, I became a proud owner of a Rockrider 5.2, which i purchased 2 months ago, after a lot of reading and analysis. Over the last 2 months, I steadily increased my ride distance from 20-30-50-60Km and felt good about it. I was doing decent time (anywhere between 2hrs 15 min to 2hrs 45 for a 55-60km ride) and was eying a century ride for more than 3 weeks.

Last week I stumbled upon this http://tinyurl.com/3cb8hww on facebook and my friend (who btw did manali leh this year) decided to do route 2 the long way i.e JP Nagar - Harohalli - Thally - Anekal - Bannerghatta - JP Nagar (approx 120km).

Boy was I kicked!

The ride -
Phase 0 - the start

5:00 am - started from home with the bike in the car and headed towards JP Nagar mini forest
6:00 am - bike assembled after a small tweak to the front break and we head off towards kanakpura road






phase 1 - smooth as silk (approx 35km - 1hour 45 min)

It was all downhill from Merida junction to Harohalli and we did good time with just one pit stop near guhantara.Reached harohalli @7.45 am after a little bit of searching we realized that the good breakfast place @harohalli had closed down (not sure though) and had breakfast at another hotel. Took off from here and headed down the road which a few other bikers (7-8 of them) had taken only to realize that it was the harohalli-anekal road. No harm done, we backtracked and hit the road to Thally after asking around a little

phase 2 - dog day afternoon! (approx 30 km - 4 hours)

For the first 30 min the road was not very great and was rolling but after that, IT WAS HELL (for a noob like me who hasnt done nandi)
The next few hours made me question the reason why I decided to spend my Sunday afternoon in acute physical discomfort instead of watching bodyguard like most normal people.
Every 10 min, I was reminded of the big bad wolf huffing and puffing to blow the house down...but at the end of the day, the house always wins. Thally was soon becoming shangrilla and I was at the end of my tether. a 30 min break..lots of water, a snickers bar and a couple of banana's made it a lot better.

I began to dread downhills as i knew what was coming at the end of it and the road snaked around the hills (periphery of Bannerghatta national park), which meant I could not leverage the downhill slopes to climb.
The vista was beautiful with swift moving cloud cover and lots of greenery and finally we made it to Thally after almost 4 grueling hours

phase 3 - a welcome break ::(approx 23 km - 1.5 hours)

The first 30 min the road was long patches of very coarse gravel but thereafter it was relatively flat and uneventful.but the leg cramps and frozen hands began to kick in real bad and hence the ride was interspersed with a lot of short breaks to stretch fingers and legs. When we reached anekal, I realized than i am almost there and the fear of not completing the ride began to fade away

phase 4 - snails pace ::(approx 20 km - 2 hours)

We decided to take the Anekal - Bannerghatta road in order to avoid the madness that is Electronic 
city.This stretch was probably the slowest that I have ridden on relatively flat terrain (not that i have ridden much!) and the road just seemed to go on and on and on... finally hit Bannerghatta road after a few more stops to stretch fingers and legs.

phase 5 - home stretch ::(approx 13 km - 40 min)

The only thing that was driving me was the fact that I will get to rest my ass on something that is a lot bigger than a loaf of bread! that and the numerous downhill stretches helped a lot!

Postmortem -

a few hours of shut eye and I was back in front of the screen to dissect the ride. I soon realized that my 'mountains' in the harohalli - thally stretch had an average gradient of 2.6% and only 2 stretches (1.2km and 4.4km) were as such 'long'. molehills - mountains...get the picture?
training harder and longer is the only way to increase endurance. period!

On the whole, the ride clearly outlined my shortcomings from both a physical and ergonomic point of view. But it only reinforced the fact that I want to do more and more of long distance/endurance cycling to burn away the flab