I may give up cycling on health grounds.

Eh?

This morning, for the first time in years, a coach had a good try at squashing me on the way to work. A quick hop onto the pavement prevented that, but it was an ‘interesting’ moment.

However that’s not the reason.

For the last year or so I’ve been getting increasing pains in various parts of my body – hips, knees, feet, elbows, shoulders, back and neck. I can’t kneel down without pain and sometimes putting socks on requires a ‘lunge’ approach to try to get the thing over my toes so it can be pulled up without bending so far. I was like thi, to a lesser degree about 4 years ago, while I was still cycling hard (although just once or twice a week) but a combination of circuit training and time seemed to make it go away.

Now I’m doing circuits pretty regularly, but all the pain is there and not leaving. Last night Chris noticed that when laying on a mat for some floor exercises I couldn’t lay my head down on the floor at a normal angle, but instead my spine and shoulders forced my chin up and my head round and back. It’s a little like having a pillow under my shoulders and neck, with no support for my head.

As a teenager, especially at 14, 15 and 16 I did a lot of cycling, many hours a week, and it clearly affected my posture, giving me rounded shoulders and a stoop. I had back pain between the ages of 16 and 19 and had exercises for it, which presumably were effective since I’ve not really suffered back pain much since! I’m now quite seriously wondering if riding twice a day is actually causing weakening/damage, even though I’m only doing it for short periods (at maximum effort!).

Wonder how I’d get on running to work? Now that would be hard going!