As ever work seems to get in the way of leisure activities and finding time to train is a persistent challenge!
With family life and and the activities that go with it, it's hard to take several hours out of the weekend to work on those hills, despite knowing I need to all the practice I can get to catch up on lost training time from earlier in the year. So getting in a few short rides during the week has become a must.
When not traveling I frequently work from home so one might think it easy to slip off out for a ride and shirk the pile of emails and project deadlines, but it's often not that easy; conference calls and deadlines tend to have me at the desk for more hours not less - don't get me wrong there are times in the day or week when I take advantage of working from home, but overall it's hard to get a consistent training schedule.
That said, fortunately I live close to the Basingstoke Canal which runs from its junction with the Wey Navigation for about thirty-two miles through the Surrey and Hampshire countryside. So a quick ride, relatively speaking, along the canal towpath on a warm summer evening it's certainly worth getting out for, even if it's rather flat and the amount of other users of the path means it's a challenge to get a consistent pace.
The scenery is quite pleasant, for example the last couple of nights I've seen a pair of swans parading their new family of five good sized cygnets serenely along the water. I'm rather hoping that they'll stay safe and will see them mature over the coming weeks.
There are couples walking, families with their children learning to ride (the next generation of cyclists), dog walkers, youths messing - nothing untoward, just messing, and joggers looking at their watches to check; on their performance, or perhaps just to see if they might stop now without feeling guilty?
Its certainly not what the canal was built for but it appears its modern day use is a good one.
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