Fitness

Was supposed to be doing a swift 55 miler into the Peak District today but rider A didn’t want to ride with rider B and spat his dummy, rider C needed to be back to feed the dog so needed something shorter, rider D didn’t show up at all and rider E was late to the meeting point.
Ended up with 3 of us doing a leisurely 35 miler at quite a slow pace with a long cafe stop and it turns out it was actually quite enjoyable not killing each other up long hills for once.
And it didn’t rain either so there is that. Recommended.

Tricky will be very disappointed at the lack of pubs involved. After all, if you didn't stop at several pubs did you even really go for a bike ride at all?

Hopefully the cafe stop meets with his approval. Obviously I’ll be gutted if not.

Did it serve Nescafe? If so it has the RC seal of top coffee approval.

What an outrageous thought.
I think it was Mellow Birds.

Been rowing (20 mins) every other day. Last few days have put yoga into the mix. Because my wrists and shoulders are fucked, this has been considerably challenging on the more high intensity workouts.

I'm also rowing 20 minutes a day, mostly 2 mins push, 1 min recovery reps.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget it’s supposed to be fun, often the less well planned rides end up being the most fun (tricky pub tours excluded)

I cycle pretty much every day - but I'm a bit of an 'urban cyclist'. I'm right on the edge of the peaks, but I'm quite intimidated as I don't really know where to go, and I find changing a spare on my road bike really tough - a mechanic in the shop told me that my rims are like 2mm larger than they should be or something - so it's mega hard to get tyres on and off them. So I like to stay within reach of assistance. Which is obviously quite limiting. I need to find a cycle buddy who is happy to go at an easy speed and short distance so I can then build up to longer ones (and potentially solo).

Following my recent illnesses that left me rather housebound for most of last year, immuno-compromised and needing a course of steroids which come with several potential side effects my wonderful Doctor (God bless the NHS) wanted me to get active. We have a pretty high tec exercise bike. I started off doing 2 sets of 15 minutes with a short break to do some restriction band stretches for my ongoing shoulder impingement. I found it quite tough to start with, coming from a zero base and aged 53 (54 next May). Having done it 5 days a week for several weeks I'm now up to 3 x 15 minute sets (with 2 short breaks for stretches) and I'm hitting about 15 miles a session - and in the last week or so I've gone from going a few minutes over the 45 to hit the 15 mile mark to going past the 15 miles whilst waiting to hit the 45 minute mark. Next step is to take it up to an hour. With 3 stretch breaks.
Hardly Olympic standard I know, but this is a heck of a journey from where I was health wise last year (and only a few weeks ago) and I haven't felt this positive about my heath in quite a while. And Mrs Rave has totally noticed a return of some definition of my leg muscles...

Did you / someone put different tyres on or are they the ones that came with those wheels? I ask because since you’ve said that you’re not confident about changing them it seems unlikely that you’ve swapped to new tyres.
And while it’s not for me to doubt the word of a mechanic that sounds really unlikely if they’re the ‘factory fitted’ ones. Anyway, you can check if you know what wheels you’ve got. Just go online to that manufacturers website, find your wheel and it’ll give you all the data including rim size and recommended min and max tyre sizes. You can then check your tyre wall and the size will be on it.
If you’re within the parameters you can ignore what the mechanic told you and maybe it’ll give you a bit more peace of mind. If you’re outside them then you need to buy some new (correct) tyres.
In case you don’t know, some tyres are absolute bastards to fit - I have some Schwalbes on my road bike that are great tyres but you need iron thumbs to get them on - while others just seem to slip on easily (continental gp5000s for example).
After that I’d just practise a bit. Get some good tyre levers to save your thumbs and then take a tyre off and put it back on two or three times and you’ll soon get the gist. Once you feel confident you’ll be able to get out a bit further by the sound of it. If you’re right next to the peaks it seems a shame to restrict yourself to urban cycling when you’ve got all that on your doorstep.

I think this is the the key bit. I need to put a film on, bring my bike into the living room, and practice doing it a few times.

Longer bike ride today. Two cafes and one pub (3 pints).
Felt like a good effort.

Which pubs?

For me it was the Cadland, mainly because of the beer garden and its proximity to my house. The Sharps Hazy IPA was surprisingly good though which was a bonus.