An interesting thing happened after the Cambridge to Oxford and Oxford to London trip. I lost sensation in my ring and little fingers, on both hands (more specifically just the outer half of the ring fingers) and the outer half of my palms. These symptoms point to ulnar nerve entrapment, and given that I’d previously done a greater distance in one day than we did going to Oxford (the longer of the two days) I don’t think the distance was the issue – maybe the fact I was going below my optimum speed changed my weight distribution somehow. Anyway the point is I decided that continuing to cycle certainly wouldn’t help the situation. Supposedly I should have regained sensation within a week. That week has passed (nearly two now). My little fingers and palms have returned to normal, but the outer halves of my ring fingers remain numb.

This evening I decided to go ahead and cycle despite the above – my normal routes never caused the problem so at worst can delay the return of sensation – the other option being to not cycle at all and then end up having lost speed when I was able to return to it. Given how long it’s been since I did any distance worth noting (I’ve continued utility cycling e.g. to and from railway stations a fair amount, but I don’t log that of course) I was expecting to be fairly slow, so I’m pleasantly surprised with an average moving speed of 27.45km/h – one of my better times for this route. If you look carefully at the route you’ll see the start/finish is further North East along Huntingdon Road – this is due to the “Summer Move” mentioned in the title – on Saturday I moved house from 94 to 138 Huntingdon Road – college like to have everyone who’s staying over the summer in one place (the move took a while carrying, everything on foot – a good 10 hours just for moving it, let alone packing and unpacking!). The move also means that the distance for this route has increased by about 0.5km.

Route:

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Here is the Google Doc with all the stats:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?
key=0At0EKwdiLZmYdFg4Mk9fdHltdWlGeWpQTHMzM3RjU3c&hl=en_GB