Woke up this morning with a mildly sore throat and a bit of a fuzzy head. This was definitely not the result of any New Year’s Eve shenanigans, alcohol-free for me and we were tucked up in bed by 10pm.

I wasn’t going to let anything like ill health hold me back, so we set out for a New Year’s ride to get that last bit of exercise before we return to work. We’ve agreed really need to make regular weekend activities like this a priority in 2017 – this will require quite a bit of shuffling of housework and such to weekdays after work.

Anyway, ride – 43km! This was much more hilly than previous routes (good practice), terribly signposted in the unfamiliar bits, so we ended up riding on some pretty major roads – this was quite cool as there was not a lot of traffic about.

Awesome ex-railway, now cycle bridge at Meadowbank. This was not the direction we wanted to go, but we crossed (and crossed back) just because we could. We’ll definitely be checking this out on a future ride.

We rode around Rhodes (oh! bike pun!) – tons of new apartment complexes, really great paths and green space.

Mangroves at Bicentennial Park

Rather less pleasant and calming – crossing the M4 motorway, controversial westconnex widening is progress.

Second dreadful cycling pun:

We (especially me) were pretty knackered afterward. We’re still pretty terrible about taking enough fuel with us – a protein ball halfway just doesn’t cut it. After a coffee, shower and lunch, I lay down on the bed to read for a bit and promptly fell asleep for 3 hours.

Throat still feeling disgusting – I’m confident I can will it away.

Two days until my return to SML. Hopefully I can get in run tomorrow, then shopping with Bessie for her Xmas present and lunch on Wednesday with Heather and Vincenzo – because seeing them 200+ days a year at SML is clearly not enough.