Its been a little while now since my last post, I thought I should update you on my training thus far. Well if I was to say I felt super fit I would be lying. That said I have been covering some pretty decent distances recently, last Saturday I cycled to and from Bournemouth and then on the Sunday I cycled a further 40 miles up to my Grans. Total mileage around 115 miles.

My current bike is a mountain bike and has been doing me proud getting to and from work. The old beast is very sturdy and reliable but has to be said not that quick. Mainly because it has a lot of bulk to cope with those mountainous roads I find on my way to work. Front and rear shock absorption for London’s many off road pistes, thick chunky tyres to give extra grip along the often treacherously slippy* Oxford Street. All of this adds up and when cycling on roads is not really necessary, though it does smooth out the potholes a little. So I decided to bite the bullet and invest in a hybrid bike. A bike specifically built for road use but would allow the odd short off road if required, kind of like choosing a Ford Fiesta over a Land Rover. Though my Ford Fiesta looks better… it probably also goes faster 🙂

My only concern now is I haven’t got all that long to get used to this new bike. Can see a picture below of the new bike nestled artfully in between loose shoes.

* shocked to find that slippy isn’t actually a word, at least according to my spell checker

After Ian’s 67 and now Dad’s 80 I was determind that I too would get in a nice long distance. So following in my Dad’s footsteps or rather cycles, I decided I’d also attempt cycling to and from Farnham. We were travelling up to Farnham and Alton anyway as it was my Uncles birthday so we spent the morning in Farnham before going over to Alton for my Uncles birthday.

The plan was I would wake at 5:30 and leave the house by 6. Strangely enough I had difficulty getting up that early so ended up leaving at 7. Cycling was going well, I didn’t feel like I was going particularly fast but I had conquered the two biggest hills on the route without stopping. Before long I reached the Alton roundabout, the one leading to the highstreet. It was there I noticed I’d picked up a puncture. Eek, I was still a good 10 miles from Grandma and Grandad’s house so I thought I might have to walk it. I pumped up the tyre and managed to get another couple of miles out of it before pumping it up again. I managed to repeat this until I eventually made it. In all the 40 miles took 3hrs 15mins which isn’t that bad given the frequent puncture fixing.

After a hearty turkey roast I got on my way and cycled to Alton (now with a new rear inner-tube). The increased tyre pressure seemed to make a huge difference and got down to Alton in around 45mins (approx 10miles). Spent quite a few hours in Alton and at around 7 I departed bound for Locks Heath. Though my legs were a little tired and I was almost instantly saddle sore I felt ok and averaged a fraction over 15mph for the remaining 40miles back home.

This morning I don’t feel too bad though am allowing myself a day of rest.

It’s been a day or two since my last post so I thought I would update you on my training progress thus far. I’ve still not yet conquered that ‘big’ distance and am only really getting 20 miles a day on the saddle. As I mentioned in my last post I have taken up running to boost my training efforts. On Monday I did 3.7miles and last night 2.7 so that is going well though it does make me even more tired in the evenings. One perhaps expected side affect of all this exercise is my waist line, I’m starting to loose some weight. Normally I wouldn’t be concerned, I’d probably be happy but several pairs of Jeans and cycling shorts now don’t fit particularly well. I’ve only lost about half a stone so far which isn’t huge but you know what, I rather miss that extra padding. I’ve still been eating plenty probably more so than I did before but I’ve now started to increase the amount of carbs that I eat so last night made a large tuna pasta salad with lots of extra cheese.

I’m starting to get a little worried. Not long ago Dad managed a 47 miler, then this weekend Ian cycled from Woking to Locks Heath, some 60+ miles. Whats the longest distance I’ve cycled so far? …(cough)… 33 miles. Both times I’ve cycled 33 I knew I could go on further but I still don’t know how much further. Anyway, my paranoia forced me to take up running after work. Hopefully this will now become a regular event. I know from recent experience that cycling and running are two very different disciplines and being good at one doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be good at the other but I figure it will be still good exercise. I have been cycling quite a while now and thought my level of fitness was improving quite a bit. Then I tried running and found my legs turned to jelly far quicker than I expected. I ran round the local park today which really handily works out to be almost exactly a mile round the perimeter so including the distance to and from I clocked up 3.7 miles (about 6k). Not far but that felt quite comfortable so maybe next time I’ll do four laps, we’ll see. Thanks again to all those that have sponsored us so far, we are now at the 10% totalizer mark!!!

Today was yet another ‘scorchio’ kindof day. Possibly the hottest of the year yet, I’ll refer to BBC weather later to confirm that claim. I had been quite bold in telling a number of people that this weekend I planned to do a 50 miler’, sadly I arrived home 17 miles short of that. Took me a little while this morning to muster up the enthusiasm to get in the saddle. The trouble I often have is in deciding where to go. I’m not very keen on going to the same places but I’m also not that good at memorising a new route before I set off. So I eventually decided to leave but without any real idea of where I was going. At least that way I had nothing to forget. I had asked Claire for any suggestions and she’d said how about Hyde Park… ‘perhaps’ I muttered… or maybe Greenwich… ‘yeah could do’. So with those rough guidelines I was off, initially sticking to my normal work route which takes me along Bayswater, the north side of Hyde Park. At around 8 miles I was at Hyde Park, through previous mis-adventures I already knew I couldn’t cycle round much of Hyde Park, so I found the main artery running through it from North to South ‘Broad Way’ and got myself down to Kensington. From there I hopped on Kensington High Street west bound and turned left onto Earls Court Road. Following that long old road you eventually get down to ‘The River’ and Battersea Bridge. Being a fan of bridges I crossed it. I followed that road for quite some way and found myself at Clapham Common. ‘I know where I am’ I thought. I turned left and was heading towards Clapham itself, I headed left towards the ‘Old Town’ and ended up … after a while … back in Battersea this time in Battersea Park. I then crossed another bridge, Chelsea bridge I think, back onto the north side of the river. I followed the rivers edge east bound and before long was beside the houses of parliament. Now I’d seen one tourist attraction I figured I may as well see some more so looped round parliament square and headed up Whitehall towards Trafalgar Square, from there I got onto the Strand. I followed the Strand onto Fleet Street and beside St. Pauls. By now I had not crossed a bridge for some tens of minutes so crossed London Bridge. Ah Claire mentioned Greenwich, I’m now on the road to Greenwich, funny. So I was now on my way to Greenwich, past Bermondsea, Deptford and I was in Greenwich. The heat had started to take its toll, I was a little parched so locked up the bike, popped into Marks and Sparks and grabbed a drink and cheese roll. A brief stop to eat/drink and I then carried my bike down through the foot tunnel linking Greenwich with the Isle Of Dogs. Annoyingly lifts at both ends were out of order. Now I made my way towards West India Quay (or at least thats where I was trying to get to) several roadworks forced me onto the east side of Canary Wharf. Finding my way back I cycled through sailing past several security checkpoints. I had now crossed to the west side and got onto Commercial Road, and then Commercial Street (imaginative road titling in London). Just past Spitalfields market I was back onto the A10, a couple of miles later I was home. Now mileage wise I knew I was probably a little short, my speedo told me it was 33 miles, however an accidental full-reset occurred last week on the way to work when I was fiddling with the buttons so the little widget didn’t have my correct wheel diameter so I could only assume it had massively under estimated my distance. Several hours of Google mapping later I can confirm that it was almost exactly 33 miles that I covered today, the little darn widget was right, grrr.

For the full route, click the image below…

As I expect you’ve noticed its been a little wet these last couple of days. Since starting cycling to work its been a matter of course that I check the weather whilst eating my breakfast. The BBC of course is my source of irrefutably accurate weather reporting. Monday was fine,  though there was some rain forecast I managed to get to and from work without getting wet. Luckily so as I had made no precautions what so ever. Tuesdays forecast was a little more severe, however I was a little late in getting up so didn’t have a lot of time to prepare suitable clothing. At the last minute I found a rain jacket but completely ignored the fact I was wearing jeans and clumpy pourous shoes. And alas didn’t pack a change of clothes. Suffice to say I arrived at work somewhat drowned and had to sit at my desk all day long without leaving for fear of ridicule at the wet patches about my person. To make matters worse the buildings air conditioning decided it would be particularly breezy sending me into the depths of near pneumonia. Typically the rest of the day the clouds relented their emptying, though I later realised some divine force had intervened to make sure the clouds were as heavily laden as possible before my cycle home. I learnt my lesson, so today I donned some shorts and packed a change of clothes.

I had planned to get on the bike today with ambitions of cycling all the way to Southend On Sea. After a little time spent investigating routes etc I realised I’d have to commit all this to memory and lets face it, there was no chance that was ever going to happen. So I decided instead to don the ‘sneakers’ and go for my first run in quite a few months. I set off not really knowing where I was going, but with a rough direction in mind (away from London). I ended up finding the Lee Valley Nature reserve. And whilst it’s not necessarily a southern’ers idyll it was pleasant and worthy of another visit. Just to find green space inside the M25 I suppose should be grateful. Anyway my running / occasional walking took me some six miles which I was reasonably proud of. If I was to compute cycling distance from effort exerted whilst running some calculations would put it at around 30 miles though I’m not quite sure how true that is. Anyway time to relax and enjoy the sun, todays twenty two degrees is expected to fall to 17 and rainy so best enjoy it while it lasts.

This is my current mileage tally. So far so good, cycling to work is slowly getting easier as the weeks pass. Mind you I still don’t feel ‘fit’. Its nice now that I arrive home in day light certainly makes a difference. So far I’ve been doing two lots of ten miles a day with a hefty 7-8 hours gap between each and I have yet to get out and do a big distance in one hit. So I need to test my endurance cycling. Can I cycle for three hours non stop? … I’m not so sure.

Slightly off topic but it was a nice suprise this morning to see snow lying on the ground. Its April, its not supposed to snow in April. And seeing as we also had the hottest day of the year this week its been a bit of a rollercoaster in temperature. By way of evidence I’ve taken a good few photo’s which I’ll upload to Flickr later today.

Being the weekend I thought I should really get out on my bike, alas sadly all I managed today was a walk to the local Sainsbury’s. Still it was exercise wasn’t it? … My excuse of eating bad things is also starting to wear a bit thin now, today I have probably consumed more calories than Chris Moyles does in an average week. Tomorrow I am starting a diet, no more sugary things is the diet, stodgey starchy things are still ok but absolutely no chocolate & sweets. I’m replacing those with fruit.

I’ve done it, two weeks since I started cycling to work and I’ve bagged 160 miles in training. As of next week I have to do it without bank holidays as cusioning so I’ll be up to 100 miles a week. I seem to be getting fitter but progress seems slow, I’m still getting very tired come the evening and have little energy to do anything more than just vegitate in front of the telly.