Air was involved, tyres or arses were not. A quarterly Asthma checkup and the peak flow meter is the undisputed big gun of lung levelling metrics. There’s a scary graph of past performance with soaring summits of invincibility shadowed by deep valleys of potential bungalow ownership.

2006 average was about 600, the first half of this year down a worrying 20{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} on that. The units of measurement is irrelevant but the top line number is not. Most of you frisky young souls out there scale unworldly peaks of 800+ assuming you have been playing nicely with your breathing chambers, and are the non dead side of 40. Hence my excuse for panting like a black dog on a hot summers day fifteen seconds into any climb. Other areas of piss poor performance are not directly related much as I pretend they are.

So when the trend is downwards, the fear spikes hard the other way. And that’s why many of my fellow sufferers cheat before the test. Gulping down surreptitious blasts from their blue inhalers, feasting on the marketing buffet of power breathers or hyperventilating in the bogs before the test. One guy just sits in the waiting room chowing down on Snickers bars which are hardly a performance enhancing drug but it seems to make him happy. Or at least, slightly less hand shakingly nervous.

Today with a clear conscience, a snifter of cold and the remains of a hangover, my number came up and that number was 660. The nurse clearly thought I’d been practicing my technique or had undertaken a back street lung transplant, and my surprise wasn’t far behind.

Always looking on the Yorkshire side of good news, it seems I’ll have to ramraid the excuses bank and find some other reasons why I still climb like a three legged stoat with a head wound. Probably a bike thing, maybe I should get another one.