The hope is that there will be some sort of magical answer. “All you have to do is a series of ten push-ups before you go to sleep at night, and whammo, the ideas just flow!”.

Maybe this isn’t such a silly thing to say. Have you ever considered the role of exercise in sucking those ideas from the sludge in your brain?

I came across a post by Jim about Running and Writing
And suddenly, I was taken back to my running days. With a pang, I realised that since I had stopped running – because of a troublesome knee – my ideas for stories had returned to the sludge in my brain.

Now you’d think that any sort of exercise would help with creativity. Increasing blood flow, releasing endorphines – isnt that enough to get the fingers pounding on the keyboard?

Not from where I stand. When I had to give up running, of course I went back to cycling. I just can’t be a sloth anymore – that was in my former life. But cycling doesn’t seem to have the same effect on my creativity as running did.

My theory for this is that your heart rate during a running session is fairly high – about eighty-five percent of your max. But in cycling, unless you’re really pushing it, your heart rate barely gets above seventy percent of your max.

Since reading Jim’s post, I feel on the verge of a big decision. Having just done a huge ride at a major event in Melbourne called “Around the Bay in A Day” where I rode 220kms in one day, my cycling career has fizzled out. Shock, horror, this isn’t me! What’s going on? Am I really going to fall into the slothful state that I detest?

Somehow I don’t think so. I actually got on my bike this morning for the first time in three weeks, and felt good.

But it’s not enough. I want the ideas! So maybe I’ll try the running again, but at a slower pace, and maybe less often. Just enough to get those stubborn ideas out of the sludge. I need those ideas, and I need them now!

‘So does Lucy pull you along on the bike?’ she asked.

‘Oh yeah, she’s really good,’ I said, a glass of gin and tonic in my hand that had more gin than tonic, I suspect.

‘Wow, that’s amazing! Is she fast?’

‘Is she ever, especially down hill. She really picks up speed then.’

The rest of the group are silent, intrigued by our conversation, waiting for me to land this poor woman.

‘So how does she tell you when to turn?’

I think I hear a smirk from one of the others.

‘Oh, she just pulls me round the corners. I follow.’

‘Gee whiz, that is so incredible!’

Then I can’t stand it any longer. I’d nearly said that Lucy barks once for left and twice for right, but it’s too much. The others start rolling around when I let this gullible woman know that I ride a tandem, that Lucy has nothing to do with my bike riding.

She probably went red, but I couldn’t see it.

Maybe one day they’ll train guide dogs to pull bikes.

But he reminded me that we were older, and so bound to start slowing down. Not a nice thought, and I wasn’t about to give in to age. So right from the start, I put in everything I had to beat the stopwatch.

Well, we did beat it! Our time this year was 41 minutes and 48 seconds, compared to last year when we did 42 minutes and 2 seconds. We chopped off a whopping 14 seconds! Now that’s good in my books, especially considering we had a head wind, and that we are both ageing. Our average speed was 41.9 km/hr. Not bad!

For those of you who don’t live in Perth, the Freeway Bike Hike is a fund-raising event for asthma held every year. This year, nearly 8,000 bikes participated. It’s not meant to be a race, but for those of us who are serious recreational cyclists, it’s just that. The freeway north is closed to all traffic for a 30 km stretch, and we get to ride through the tunnel that is normally closed to bikes. This alone is great fun, not to mention flying up the freeway which is smooth and a pleasure to ride on.

So next year, my goal is to shave off another few seconds. I haven’t told Beau yet. I’ll have to break it to him gently.

That goes for my sporting side-line too. I’ve been trying to look after my knee so that I can keep running. I took it slowly – which was so hard for me – and did all my stretching and muscle building exercises. But after a lot of soul-searching, I realise that running is probably not for me.

Why? Because my knee starts hurting after only a short period of time of very slow jogging on the treadmill.

So I’ve reviewed my goals and set my sights back on cycling. Funny how opportunities crop up. I met a fellow cyclist on one of my regular rides who has sparked my enthusiasm for a cycling event I hadn’t really considered before, because I wasn’t sure that tandems were allowed to take part. But it seems as though tandems can join in, so the training is on. I’ve got till May to get my fitness up for a 50 km team time trial in York. I’ve never done one before, so it will be very interesting, to say the least.

So don’t worry about resetting goals. That’s part of the plan.

Except for now.

I’ve got a complicated knee injury that has resulted from the way I’m built, the muscles I’m using that I shouldn’t be, and ones I’m not using that I should be. The result? My knee gets very sore when I’m running.

I’m doing the exercises my physio suggests and trying to take it slowly to remedy the problem. But nothing has improved in the last three weeks or so. All I can do is a bit of walking and jogging in short sessions, and I’m discovering my knee can only take very short intervals of slow – and I mean slow – jogging. Now going slow is not me!

So reality has set in. What do I want? Yes, I love running, and I’d love to do marathons. But no, I don’t want to spend months of special exercises and slow recovery to get back to where I was, only perhaps to get injured again. More importantly, I don’t want to compromise my health for an activity I don’t have to do. It isn’t a career; it’s just for fun. I have to remember that my mobility is so important to me. I don’t want to be prevented from getting out and enjoying myself because I have a bad knee. And I’m a guide dog user. If my knee packs it in, that would be the end of that.

So I’m sitting at the edge of a cliff, wondering whether to jump off into the unknown, or retreat to safety. Is it worth it to push it, or should I stick with what I can do without injury and pain, ie cycling?

So there’s no 8km marathon this weekend. Watch this space for more.