As my poor car is currently in North Wales having its broken bits lovingly tended to by Ryan, my bike is now my only means of transport for all my daily needs.  Ordinarily I would drive the 17 mile round trip to Asda, so without the car I was considering a trip to a much nearer but more expensive shop to buy food.  But keen to incorporate longer bike rids whenever I can, I decided to sacrifice a few hours of my day to cycle there….

Can I fit a week’s worth of shopping onto my bike?

Fully packed with an extra 15kg of weight!

I learnt a few things today which I can add to my growing knowledge of cycling:

1) When on a lightweight twitchy bike, that you are clipped in to, with a weeks worth of food weighing you down, it is quite scary when your shoe lace gets trapped in the pedal meaning you can’t move your right foot, or unclip.  Particularly scary when cycling in busy traffic.  Note to self: always check shoe laces are firmly tucked away before setting off.

2) Just because it can fit in the pannier bag, doesn’t mean you should buy it.  Did I need the 1.5kg of flour?  Well yes, that’s why I bought it, but I really should have thought about the weight of everything before buying… especially all those potatoes!

3) Your bike is not as easy to turn sharp corners when fully laden with a week’s worth of shopping…do not attempt to do this or you will nearly fall off and look like an idiot.

4) When lots of people are staring at you as you walk around the supermarket, don’t assume it’s because of the noise of your SPDs, or that you have helmet hair…assume it may be because of the bike grease smeared on your face.

5) Even a supermarket trip can be logged on runkeeper and therefore sneakily counted as ‘training’:

Check out that calorie burn…I should have bought some biscuits to snack on the cycle home.