Alex Harries's diary

I've just spent £275 on mountain biking kit. Given the fact I'm part Sunderland, that's like waking up and realising you were so drunk last night that you gave a mate your car, your house, your significant other/laptop/inflatable sheep, and a big wet snog for good measure - in other words, I;m suffering acute pain from the wallet area at the moment.

The worst bit is, I didn't buy anything impressive, such as a set of super-light wheels, or a frame made from unobtainium - oh no, it's much more boring that that: I've decided that, since swimming poses too much danger of drowning, death-by-horrible-disease, or being mown down by a school of rubber hat-equipped blue rinsers on a morning swim'n'chat session, I'm going to try and get my cardiovascular fitness up (also known as, "trying to force myself to smoke a bit less") by cycling up and down the twisty lanes of Hampshire. Probably mostly at night, since I don't seem to be able to get out of bed before dusk during winter... ;o)

Clearly, much safer than churning up and down a swimming pool. Or not...

So I've been over to Evans Cycles dot com to pick up the parts I need to convert my trials bike (which I built under some naive belief that I had the required sense of balance and lack of self-consciousness required to hop around on one's back wheel and jump up and down "things" in order to be a proper trials rider) into a proper cross-country spec'd mountain bike - chainset, gear levers, cables, longer stem, nuclear-powered lights, daft little back pack that will only hold a spare tyre and an hour's-worth of food (for me, so about one shopping trolley load then...), helmet, reinforced gloves to protect my delicate digits in case of a stack... You get the idea.

And somehow that came to £275.

No, I don't understand how, either. But when you've just been paid, and getting fit whilst seeing the world the countryside (within a 2 mile radius of my home, given how lazy I am) seems like a great idea - even when it's barely above freezing outside, and seagulls are freezing to death in mid-air - it looks like a great idea to go and spend all your hard-earned on MTBing kit.

All that said, I used to cycle a lot - where my 'rents live are some great trails, and I used to love hacking up and down them a hundred miles at a time, so I've got a fighting chance of surviving. The only worry I have now is that I can't actually bring myself to go and buy a pair of padded cycling shorts (lycra - oh, the shame...) so there's a reasonable chance I'll be identifiable solely by my gait in the coming weeks. That and the fact I'll inevitably have red marks around my (newly-shaven) head from a badly-fitting helmet.

So, in short, if I didn't look comical enough before, I'm certainly going to look a plonker now. Here's to good health... And chafage...