Crunch Time
The end of October is crunch time! From now until then, cycling is top priority every day.
Rochelle said that I need to push for over four hours! Thursday I did four and a half hours. When I stopped, I felt that I could have done much more. Good news is that there is no pain in my knee. This is great because it’s a sign that it is getting stronger! On Friday, my body was sore from the previous day, so I rested.
Saturday I was back on the bike. I started at eleven and stopped at four hours fifty minutes. This was the best ride I ever had!
Riding long distances means I have to keep myself company, which is also fun. Sometimes I think of situations or people that make me angry, and then I fight with them as I cycle. At times I will even shout into the wind! This allows me to let out my feelings without hurting anybody in the process, including myself. Then there are also times that I laugh at myself! I like to think about good things, like my future and where I’m going. I also love to pray. I would pray for other people that I’m thinking about or even for the person in the car who just passed and didn’t recognize me as a cyclist.
The last ten kilometers is where self-motivating is very important. To motivate myself I imagine a crowd next to the road cheering me on. But imagining it isn’t enough, so I speak the words out loud: ‘Go Deon, go!’; ‘well done!’; ‘just a few more meters’; ‘you still have enough strength – use it!’ I felt so motivated at the end that I didn’t want to stop. I wanted to do more!
Achieving six hours by the end of the mouth is very possible!
As long as I enjoy it, it’s doable!
By Deon Labuschagne
