Days 196 + 197

I've had a really fun couple of busy days, I'm feeling so happy but completely worn out.

As regular readers of my blog will know, I've recently been learning to ride a motorbike. I did my CBT on an automatic bike a few weeks ago, then last week, I started brushing up on my geared motorbike skills before I went out and bought a motorbike of my own. This week I've been completing my training on a geared bike. When I turned up for Wednesday's session, I was a little disappointed to find that unlike last week, I wasn't being trained on my own. Luckily the other student was a really lovely guy, he's a model builder and a computer geek and really passionate about learning to ride so we got on pretty well. I was hoping that it would only take one more session to get good enough to go out for a road ride, mostly for financial reasons, but during yesterday's lesson, I wasn't really feeling confident enough to go out yet and the other guy wasn't quite up to it yet either. So we spent the rest of the session off road to hone our low speed skills and control a little more, then today we all went out for a nice long ride.

At the end of yesterday's lesson, I was feeling incredibly excited and positive about today's planned ride, but as the evening wore on, I became more and more nervous and worried about it. While I was lying in bed, trying to sleep, it was all I could think about and it made for a really poor night's sleep, about 3 or 4 hours altogether with some really disturbing stress dreams too! By time I got to the riding school, I was feeling frazzled, anxious and pretty apprehensive but my instructor was his usual sunny, encouraging self and really helped to make me feel at ease and as soon as we got out on the road, my confidence started to pick up and I really started enjoying myself.

After the ride we all sat around in the bike showroom with the instructor's wife (who works there too), drinking coffee and having a nice chat about where we needed improvement, what our plans for future riding/training were and what sort of bikes we fancied riding. He gave us lots of great tips and things to watch out for on the road and we had a chat about protective clothing. He asked why I had all my own kit apart from trousers and I told him that I had bought the jacket a few years ago but I was waiting for my weight to settle a bit before I bought trousers. I may have possibly mentioned (gloated) that I'd managed to shift about 5 stones in the last 6 months and my instructor's wife was amazed and curious. I explained a bit about CD and the next thing I knew, she was on the phone finding out about her nearest CDC!!

Anyway, I did well on my assessment ride, my instructor is happy for me to go out and ride a geared bike on my own and I'm so pleased! Also, I've been so preoccupied with bike stuff for the last 2 days, I've not had time to eat, even though I've been feeling hungry and I'm not back in ketosis yet. I'm sure it'll come soon enough though, I just have to keep going like this and I'll be fine.