Hydrate or die

Being manipulated like a slab of beef on a physio's plinth can be a wonderful experience. Sometimes. Being turned over like a pig on a spit with an orange in it's mouth, kneaded, beaten, stretched to breaking point and beyond, all in the name of sport is a little unfair. My Patella tendon, something I didn't know I possessed, is giving me grief. But I knew something was wrong because I was weeing like Brussel's Mannequin Piss for the last week. Apparently with my quads tighter than a snare drum, they were refusing to absorb water. I drink a minimum of 2 litres of water a day, so instead of being absorbed it was looking for a way out. My patella is being pulled unceremoniously upwards like a guide wire on the Golden Gate bridge by my tight quad. And as the only time I usually stretch is for the vinegar in a chippers, its got to the point where something has to give. Ice, foam roller, stretches. Forty Seven years old next month and I've only been to a physio five times in my life. I am the lucky chap. But if I don't change, starting yesterday, I'll be living on a plinth by age forty eight! Add to this my Carpal Tunnell'ed wrists and tendonitis-prone feet, sure you may as well turn me to glue today! But I am going to embrace change. I used never do intervals. Wondered why I got dropped. I changed training and got better. I used never put in miles, never had endurance. Changed that too. Funny as it may seem, I would rather do uber-hard intervals now, would rather come back shook, than wander aimlessly around the roads calling myself a cyclist. Age has another effect though. Its made me conservative in how I expend my energy. It may just be that I am stubborn but I know in a race or event, I have X amount to give and I'm not going to throw it away. Its probably an awareness that I am not twenty years younger too. A young lad has a whole box of matches to burn in a race, Maguire and Patterson couldn't keep up with a twenty-year-old in a race. But I'm more aware of what my body is capable than ever. For example, a two-day race is beyond me now. I cannot recover, despite wearing everything but a compression willy-warmer, bathing in a vat of protein shakes', getting a rub from ten Turks, sleeping at altitude on Glenmore hill, eating chicken with my porridge and being carried around on a litter by a bunch of Lilliputians. No matter what I do to stay fresh I'll wake the next day with someone else's legs, notably an eighty-year-old smoker's. Oh, and I need sleep. Six hours does it but any less and I become a fist-dragging troll muttering monosyllables. Can't ride a bike if the bags under your eyes get caught in the spokes. Oh, and I need wine, a glass or two-ish. Swear by it! So don't feel sorry for me as I roll my wrinkled limbs like Mary Berry arsing around with dough. Please don't laugh as I walk like Captain Ahab without his white nemesis, or shop in circles in the supermarket because my tracking is off. I'll be right as rain when I get some sleep after a dinner of wine, stretch my quads like playdoh, beat my patella down to a measly bit of gristle, ice the offending limb 'til its colder than an Eskimo's chest freezer and find my way down the stairs for tomorrow's bike ride like a king crab with saddle sores.