I'm no Chris Froome
CYCLING TO GET FIT - THE EARLY WEEKS
To recap - I'm 41, severely unfit and overweight and had recently decided to enter a 5km bubble run and had two and a half months to try and get in some sort of shape. After all my 12 year old son was taking part with me and I didn't want to show him up by collapsing part way around!!! I am using the run as motivation to get myself fit and lose weight for reasons mentioned on my previous post. I also had another reason for wanting to shed some timber.
Now dear reader, I'm a simple bloke ('Bloke' was my nickname at college). I go to work and work hard (I think), I come home and spend time with my wife and son. I enjoy watching sports my favourite is rugby union. I'm a Bristol Rugby fan and season ticket holder. At the game on boxing day (a home victory to Worcester) I purchased the home shirt and got my surname and the number '76' (my year of birth) put on it. Lets be fair when I tried it on it looked like I'd been poured into the shirt. It doesn't look good. Luckily with rugby being a winter sport for the rest of the season I could go to games wearing my shirt but not looking ridiculous in it as I'd have a coat on to hid the shame of the extra tyres it looked like I was wearing under the shirt!!
So as I started my regular early morning cycling I decided that another bit of motivation for this was to at some point the following season take my usual seat at the rugby with my shirt on looking the appropriate level of snugness.
Back to the exercising. I knew if I took the time I could search online and find loads of plans that I could use for cycling (my initial choice of workout) but being me I thought it would be best if I kept it simple. Plus I couldn't guarantee I'd get out everyday to cycle. My wife has dialysis 4 times a week and does it in the evenings. Sometimes she is late getting on dialysis and it can be gone midnight before I get to bed. So getting up at 0520 to exercise after a late night isn't good for me or anyone who asks daft questions at work!! I decided that I'd make an effort to get up and out as many mornings of the week as I could and start building up the distances.
We live in Weston super Mare so not far from where we live there is a nice long promenade. At 0530 in the morning its pretty much deserted - apart from those of us up and exercising or the fearless seagulls feasting out of broken rubbish bags from the various food outlets.
So with a mobile phone holder on my bike and my phone turned on to Strava I began getting out. Each morning I vaguely had an idea of where I was going to cycle. I started off simple and shortish distances. My first ride I did a circuit from our hose down to the Grand Pier and back again - 2.1 miles in 13 minutes and burnt 86 calories. There must be something wrong with the app - only 86 calories felt like a lot more cycling into the headwind at times. By the end of the first week I was pushing myself further each day and had managed to get a ride of 5.2 miles in 31 minutes but I still wasn't convinced about the amount of calories I was burning!!
I've enjoyed looking at my rides on the app and seeing how I've done on certain segments. For example there is a timed segment coming down from Birnbeck Pier to the entrance to Knightstone Island. One morning my phone nearly became the first casualty of my morning rides. I'd cycled the 'climb' up to Birnbeck Pier from the town centre and at the top had turned around and was starting my descent. I decided this morning that I was going for a personal best in that segment. So I set off down the hill pedalling like mad to get up speed. I looked down and in slow motion could see my phone shaking lose from the holder over the very bumpy road surfaces. I saw my phone come out of the holder and bounce on the road and felt my bike run over it.
I'm not going to repeat the actual words I said as I felt my back wheel go over the phone - lets just say I wasn't very happy!! I pulled on my brakes and turned around to go and pick up the pieces of my phone and fume the rest of the way home. To my amazement my phone was still in one piece and only had a couple of scratches on the corners of the case!! The downside was that I think before that incident I was on for a personal best for that segment - so fumed about that!!
Strava tells me that I've done 65 rides this year (all since the end of May) and covered 181 miles. As well as the early morning rides I've been trying to ride to and from work too. In those 65 rides there has only been 1 abandon. In the second week of morning rides I wen out one morning and there was a bit of a storm coming in and the wind was strong. So strong that before I managed to get down to the end of the road it had blown me to a halt twice - lets not forget I'm a big unit for the wind to stop, I'm perfect for slip streaming behind!!. I persevered a bit and headed to the park figuring that the wind would be worse down on the promenade and I could do some laps around the park. The wind stopped me in my tracks twice more so I decided to give it up as a bad job.
So far the longest ride is 10 miles - it took 59 minutes, I burned 469 calories and went up and over 3 fairly steep bridges and the climb up to Birnbeck Pier. I haven't ridden for a couple of weeks but I'm going to get back out on the bike this week and I'm aiming to increase the distance - depending on the wind.
But like I said at the top - I'm no Chris Froome...
To recap - I'm 41, severely unfit and overweight and had recently decided to enter a 5km bubble run and had two and a half months to try and get in some sort of shape. After all my 12 year old son was taking part with me and I didn't want to show him up by collapsing part way around!!! I am using the run as motivation to get myself fit and lose weight for reasons mentioned on my previous post. I also had another reason for wanting to shed some timber.
Now dear reader, I'm a simple bloke ('Bloke' was my nickname at college). I go to work and work hard (I think), I come home and spend time with my wife and son. I enjoy watching sports my favourite is rugby union. I'm a Bristol Rugby fan and season ticket holder. At the game on boxing day (a home victory to Worcester) I purchased the home shirt and got my surname and the number '76' (my year of birth) put on it. Lets be fair when I tried it on it looked like I'd been poured into the shirt. It doesn't look good. Luckily with rugby being a winter sport for the rest of the season I could go to games wearing my shirt but not looking ridiculous in it as I'd have a coat on to hid the shame of the extra tyres it looked like I was wearing under the shirt!!
So as I started my regular early morning cycling I decided that another bit of motivation for this was to at some point the following season take my usual seat at the rugby with my shirt on looking the appropriate level of snugness.
Back to the exercising. I knew if I took the time I could search online and find loads of plans that I could use for cycling (my initial choice of workout) but being me I thought it would be best if I kept it simple. Plus I couldn't guarantee I'd get out everyday to cycle. My wife has dialysis 4 times a week and does it in the evenings. Sometimes she is late getting on dialysis and it can be gone midnight before I get to bed. So getting up at 0520 to exercise after a late night isn't good for me or anyone who asks daft questions at work!! I decided that I'd make an effort to get up and out as many mornings of the week as I could and start building up the distances.
We live in Weston super Mare so not far from where we live there is a nice long promenade. At 0530 in the morning its pretty much deserted - apart from those of us up and exercising or the fearless seagulls feasting out of broken rubbish bags from the various food outlets.
So with a mobile phone holder on my bike and my phone turned on to Strava I began getting out. Each morning I vaguely had an idea of where I was going to cycle. I started off simple and shortish distances. My first ride I did a circuit from our hose down to the Grand Pier and back again - 2.1 miles in 13 minutes and burnt 86 calories. There must be something wrong with the app - only 86 calories felt like a lot more cycling into the headwind at times. By the end of the first week I was pushing myself further each day and had managed to get a ride of 5.2 miles in 31 minutes but I still wasn't convinced about the amount of calories I was burning!!
I've enjoyed looking at my rides on the app and seeing how I've done on certain segments. For example there is a timed segment coming down from Birnbeck Pier to the entrance to Knightstone Island. One morning my phone nearly became the first casualty of my morning rides. I'd cycled the 'climb' up to Birnbeck Pier from the town centre and at the top had turned around and was starting my descent. I decided this morning that I was going for a personal best in that segment. So I set off down the hill pedalling like mad to get up speed. I looked down and in slow motion could see my phone shaking lose from the holder over the very bumpy road surfaces. I saw my phone come out of the holder and bounce on the road and felt my bike run over it.
I'm not going to repeat the actual words I said as I felt my back wheel go over the phone - lets just say I wasn't very happy!! I pulled on my brakes and turned around to go and pick up the pieces of my phone and fume the rest of the way home. To my amazement my phone was still in one piece and only had a couple of scratches on the corners of the case!! The downside was that I think before that incident I was on for a personal best for that segment - so fumed about that!!
Strava tells me that I've done 65 rides this year (all since the end of May) and covered 181 miles. As well as the early morning rides I've been trying to ride to and from work too. In those 65 rides there has only been 1 abandon. In the second week of morning rides I wen out one morning and there was a bit of a storm coming in and the wind was strong. So strong that before I managed to get down to the end of the road it had blown me to a halt twice - lets not forget I'm a big unit for the wind to stop, I'm perfect for slip streaming behind!!. I persevered a bit and headed to the park figuring that the wind would be worse down on the promenade and I could do some laps around the park. The wind stopped me in my tracks twice more so I decided to give it up as a bad job.
So far the longest ride is 10 miles - it took 59 minutes, I burned 469 calories and went up and over 3 fairly steep bridges and the climb up to Birnbeck Pier. I haven't ridden for a couple of weeks but I'm going to get back out on the bike this week and I'm aiming to increase the distance - depending on the wind.
But like I said at the top - I'm no Chris Froome...
Comments
Post a Comment