Today

Today started with a commute into town on Lola, in which I succesffully negotiated the traffic-light hell that is Willis Street post-Bypass.  I didn't kill myself and I got to my desk before 7.30 a.m.  I'd left home stupidly early to ensure there was minimal traffic on the road.

By 3.00 I'd handed over the first draft of my project schedule to our administrator for collation with the rest of the programme schedules.  Not bad, considering that two weeks ago I had only just taken up the project manager role and had to start creating the thing from scratch, having never used Microsoft Project before.  Over the last couple of days I've also managed to identify a major risk to the project, which can be mitigated if we prioritise work on one of our products.  

To add to that, I've also put together a rough draft of a project work plan, which the programme manager will be able to use to feed into the programme work plan, which is due to go to our steering committee in a few weeks.  
 
By 5.00 I was exhausted and our team headed off to Liquidate for a quick glass of wine to celebrate our achievements.  By 6.00 I was getting changed back into my cycling gear, and then
itwas a slow 25km ride home around the Bays to the wind wand, through Kilbirnie to Lyall Bay, and back up to Brooklyn through Happy Valley.

The bike kicked my butt tonight, but I guess it's not that surprising.  My candle-burned-at-both ends day followed on from yesterday's morning of hard-core upper body and core weights and evening manic RPM.  My quads were already pretty dead.  On the positive side I only got overtaken by a couple of fit male road cyclists, and I even overtook one (though to be fair he was just coasting).  It was pretty
demoralising though to be overtaken on Happy Valley Rd as though I were standing still.  

It was a beautiful evening (even with the headwind on the South Coast) and I should have enjoyed myself, but I was just kind of over it.  I have to remember how much of a psychological challenge running used to be when i first started.  Now running is a release for me.  At the moment cycling is still just physically and mentally hard.  At least with running I'm on a footpath or trail.  When I'm cycling there are cars, potholes, gravel and glass.  There are traffic lights and intersections and decisions to be made about where to place myself on the road and whether to unclip or gamble on a red changing to green.  

I'm looking forward to the day that I find cycling as relaxing as I find running.  Until then I'll aim to commute to work at least once a week.  I'll just force myself to have fun, damn it!