Yawn
Actually I am about 7 pound heavier than I have been lately. I'm still just under 14 stone and at six foot that's not too bad. The bugger is that it makes a big difference to my running. It's not so bad if I'm doing a slower pace on a long run, say 20 miles, but if I want to do a good time for a 5k or 10k run it does make it much harder.
I was working up to doing my first full marathon but I got a chest infection that stopped me training. The next thing I knew, three weeks had gone by and I'd de-trained to the extent that I was struggling to run further than 15 miles. I suspect that if I was ten years younger I would have shrugged the illness off. Middle age is a pain eh?
As for the bike, I got out again yesterday for a longer blast and it is just astounding how comfortable I felt on it. Everything works as it should and in no time at all I was happily tipping into bends like a loon. I've been riding a CB500, an ER5 and a Yamaha Diversion since I last had an XBR on the road and I doubt I went as fast on those as I did on the XBR yesterday.
I've got an XBR to prep in my garage at the minute, the ex-Smudge sidecar tug. The bike needs stripping to fully assess how bad the rot is (no offence Smudge, but it is a little rusty). The engine is Fubar, but that's not a problem given that I have a few under the bench. The one problem is petrol tanks, they tend to rot. If you're an XBR owner and you get offered a good tank, buy it, they are going to be in very short supply. The XBR I'm borrowing has the tank from my old bike fitted, but Gareth is having the original tank repaired so hopefully I'll get my tank back.
GC
