I do not think that word means what you think it means

Why do pedestrians usually interpret 'Shared Pathway' as 'I will do whatever the hell I like and cyclists can work around me and if they hit me it will be their fault Pathways'. Not all of them of course, but an annoying percentage.

I tend to not ride on cycleways all that often for the above reason (the freeway cycleway being an exception), but sometimes it is very hard to avoid. But when I do ride on a cycleway, I always seem to encounter pedestrians with a deathwish. Today it was a woman walking on the wrong side with a horse disguised as a great dane, which then had a lunge at me. On reflections, perhaps she wasn't the one with the deathwish.

The thing that annoys me is that when cyclists behave on the road like some pedestrians do on the shared paths, ie taking up both lanes, moving across a lane without looking etc, we get irate drivers screaming at us and occasionally running us down all with the support of the general public. However, if cyclists did that to pedestrians on one of the 'shared paths' people would hate us, more so. And once again it would somehow be our fault, probably because we would have been riding too fast and not making allowances for pedestrians etc.

Sometimes you just feel like you can't win.

Bit of a mixed bag recovery wise today.

Today has been a public holiday down in Perth, and so whilst it was a fairly perfect morning for riding this morning, I stayed in bed instead and had a sleep in instead. It was very nice.

By this afternoon my back was feeling surprisingly good and I was feeling happy with the world. So I went out for a ride. Which also was very nice.

The not so nice bit came about when I got off the bike. Once I started to cool down I realised that my back was killing me. It hadn't really been giving me much grief on the bike. But once I stopped riding I could barely walk. Not so very nice. I am now not so happy with the world.

I have another ride on the program tomorrow and I will see how I am feeling in the morning. But given how my back reacted to my ride this afternoon, it occurs to me that riding tomorrow might be a bit of a stupid idea. Triathletes generally aren't that bright, but we aren't completely insane.

I have a physio appointment on Wednesday, but at the moment I will see if I can get that shifted to tomorrow sometime. I will get that done and then take it from there.

For now I am not even thinking about the Ironman I am supposed to be doing in three weeks.