The sea, the sea

There's probably a limit as to how many bad days I'll be able to blame the wind for, so I may as well get them in now. It would have been naive to assume that every day was going to be flat calm, or that every road was sheltered by trees, but yesterday, to put it bluntly, took the piss. An 80km stage was always going to be difficult this early on, so a head wind on a loaded bike with the aerodynamics of a sideways cow was not ideal. Unless you've experienced it before it's difficult to describe what it feels like to build up some speed, shift up a gear only be blown back by a gust so that you have to shift down two gears and start all over again. For six hours. And always, without fail, the wind would gust at the precise moment that I shifted up. It was uncanny, so much so that there were times when I thought I controlled the wind with a mere flick of the shifters. Soul-destroying does not begin to describe it.

And then there was the knee. Oh the knee. It was fine for the first 25km, after that it was as bad as it had been on Tuesday, and even with the ibuprofen, tubi-grip (thanks Trish!) and anti-inflammatory cream it was bordering on agony by the 50km mark. I have never been so happy to see a steep hill as I was around the 55th km, as it gave me the perfect excuse to get off and push the bike for half an hour. Thankfully, the knee must have taken pity on its own out-of-shape self and gave up complaining after that (either that or it was so swollen and the tubi-grip so tight that I stopped feeling it) and it was barely a nuisance for the last 20km. Of course, not that it made a difference as by this stage the left side of my neck, my thighs and, yes, my saddle area (is that a cheer I hear?) were all fairly tender to say the least.

Still, I made it to Valdivia. And before darkness fell and the condors began to circle too. Never mind that it was probably too long a stage to have tried out this early on, never mind that I should have given my knee more chance to rest up, never mind that I'll probably have to stay here for 4 or 5 days to recover; I made it to Valdivia. With a wonky knee and a head wind, and I never even tried to hitch a lift with a pick-up truck. More down to the fact that I couldn't summon the energy to do so than out of mental resilience I suspect, but hey ho...

Still, and despite the pain in almost every part of my body today, I can't help but feel encouraged by it all. It all seems to be falling into place: I'm getting into a routine on cycling days, I'm coping (barely, but coping) with long distances and I have a nice cyclist's tan coming on (my arms look like they've been semi-dipped in wood-stain). Happy days.