Tuesday 11 October 2011

Lord of the Oxford Ring

Unlike many so-called Renaissance ‘men’, the Renaissance Troll knows that academic and artistic endeavours must be balanced by physical pursuits. So said Socrates, or perhaps Plato, or probably Plato quoting Socrates.

My two physical pursuits of choice are softball and cycling. With the softball season over, it’s back to the bike for me, and this weekend my wife and I decided on a new challenge. We would circumnavigate the city of Oxford, a route apparently known as the ‘Lord of the Oxford Ring’! See, even when I try to be all cool and athletic, there is still a touch of geekery to it.

In the interests of full disclosure, we actually rewrote part of the route to avoid a very nasty section of road cycling and replaced it with a nice section of cycling next to the Thames. That said, we still spent three hours cycling nearly twenty miles around the city. It’s not the most beautiful cycle route as most of it follows the ring road, but it did come with a nice sense of accomplishment when we had completed it.

A few years ago, I set myself the task of cycling 10,000 miles, which raised a few eyebrows since I hadn’t ridden a bike consistently since I was a boy. I’m proud to report that I have just passed 6,000 miles on my quest.

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