Taken me a week since getting the OK ,to pluck up courage and attempt a run. Almost 14 months since my back went after a run, and it showed! Following instructions I ran 2 mins, walked 2 mins, ran again etc.. Once I’d mastered the one leg in front of the other thing, it went OK. 2 mins at a time was plenty…. So far so good, the back doesn’t ache any more than it did beforehand.

24mins running, 22 mins walking, 4 miles in total 

I’m sorry it has taken so long but I’ve finally blogged. My work ethic seems to have ignored my life needs, but hey we’ll address that later, and let’s not get any psychotherapists excited about any of my ‘issues’.

I wrote a training plan at Christmas but have achieved only half of my goals thus far. According to the schedule I should be doing forty miles twice a week, but I’d be lucky to get one session of twenty in, let alone doing four times that. Still we are gaining hours of light by the day and I’ll soon get in the groove.

Most of my training has been indoors with the cross trainer, hoovering, lifting cans of lager and opening wine bottles amongst other key life critical activities, its cold outside and it gets cold and wet outside and it often gets colder and wetter outside.Don’t get me wrong, I have done some proper stuff too, I’ve been swinging about in tree’s, chasing lawnmower’s and I’ve been working on equipment pricing etc, but I do need to knuckle down, and get some serious mileage in.

The last twenty mile burn resulted in a bike overhaul with new pedal plates and some serious language encouragement. That aside, I am still very excited about the forthcoming adventure and will post another blog soon.

Today is day 7 of my cycling to work ‘experiment’ and I can safely say it’s going rather well. I do have the odd thought about hopping on a tube and I do get extremely tired in the evenings and slob out infront of the telly. However it has its benefits, take today, it was sunny, relatively mild, a day I’d much rather be out doors than stuck on a stinky tube. Some benefits I probably shouldn’t admit to are that I now eat what ever I like without feeling guilty, the odd fried breakfast, a mars bar at lunch, a pizza after work. Maybe a McDonalds thrown in at the weekend, its all good. So my anticipated weight loss isn’t going quite to plan but I feel a lot better.

I noticed that today’s nice weather brought out the ‘occasional’ cyclists who normally tube in but when the weather’s nice they hop on their bike. It was actually a little congested in places with so many bikes on the road. The ‘occasional’ cyclists are the ‘L’ plate drivers of the cycling world, slow and lacking in confidence.

My cycle log is now up at 60miles (in the last 7 days). By tomorrow evening I will have hit the 80mile mark. 20miles a day seems a long way off from cycling 100miles in a day but its a start.

For this mornings cycle check out this link

 http://sportstracker.nokia.com/nts/workoutdetail/index.do?id=119315

…and time to get back on the bike after a 5 day break. Seemed to have lots of aches and pains after the last chiropracter session and had somehow strained my chest. Must have overdone the ‘dead bug’ exercise!. A nice steady 16 miles on Tuesday got the legs going and made me feel a bit better.

On Wednesday went for a bit more. Attached the bottle carrier and a flask of coffee to my bike and set off for Wickham and the Meon Valley Railway track. A bit chilly, but fairly pleasant when I left. Several hours later, arrived back home, frozen stiff and plastered from head to toe in mud! Knew there was a likelihood of ‘drizzle’ later on, but hoped to beat it. I didn’t!. I hadn’t banked on the hail & sleet though…….

Still, 35 miles on the training log.  The thought of doing 3 times that distance daily for nearly a fortnight is starting to seem pretty scary!