You might well read this and think that my Olympic Dream is effectively dead, and this would be a fair assumption, certainly it is going to be a near impossible task now… but it is not quite dead… not yet.  When I started I was an overweight smoker, I am still overweight, but I haven’t had a cigarette now for ten months, the longest period since I started more than 15 years ago.   In addition several things have happened recently which may prove to help my quest along.   Selling my car is forcing me to exercise one way or another, whether I feel like it or not, but the most significant is that I have applied for university.  If I get in I will start in September and will have a little more free time (especially as I plan to study within my area of expertise), but I will also have the opportunity to join a cycling club at university too… which could help with my ambition.

So today I was invited to my parent’s house by my little sister, she has just bought the new Guitar Hero game and wanted me to come and play with her.  As my parents live around 12 miles away I had no choice but to cycle (I loathe public transport as a previous post about bus drivers might indicate).  So I dusted off my gear, pumped up my tyres and set off.  Now I was quite worried about my clip on shoes and pedals, they have proven quite dangerous thus far and being so out of practice I thought perhaps it might be an idea to take them off.  I utterly failed in this… I am not sure if I have inadequate tools or if I was doing it wrong, but I could not get the pedals off, so I gave up and decided to risk it.

As it happens I somehow managed to avoid falling into the path of a passenger carrying doom machine, commonly referred to as a bus, and made it safely to my parent’s house.  I took a leisurely pace and did the 12.5 mile journey in around 40 minutes.  At this point you might be wondering what the title of this post is referring to, if the journey was uneventful.   The return journey you might ask?  Actually no, it’s a fairly tenuous link to suggest that biking was the cause of my danger, but it was the method by which I arrived at the dangerous situation, so it fits, sort of.  I spent an enjoyable evening playing Guitar Hero with my sister… and everything was perfectly safe and ordinary… right up until the point where nature called and I needed to use the rest room.   Brace yourself, and story that involves a bathroom and danger is almost certainly going to be somewhat gruesome.

Now, I have to explain something at this point, which might help you understand how this happened.   My father is quite possibly the laziest person on the planet.  His unfinished project count is higher than the unemployment rate of bankers and my parent’s house is in several states of disrepair.  Combine this with the fact that my father is at least part Womble, and you also have a house that is literally overflowing with stuff… all sorts of stuff.  So my trip to the bathroom began in the usual manner, I casually wandered upstairs and made my way in the right general direction, deftly avoiding the various obstacles that make any horizontal movement in that house like training for an army assault course.  It was dark, so naturally I reached for the light switch.   The light switch, like most bathroom switches, was on the outside and was hidden behind a pair of pyjama trousers that were hanging from a pile of suitcases that occupy a storage shelf above the stairs.  In any other house I supppose this would be odd, but not at my parent’s.  I reached through the pyjama curtain and then something bit me.

At first I thought it was one of the seven cats that happen to live there too, but it felt very much more like a snake, or it did at first.   I shouted “ahhh”… and then a split second later the pain intensified a thousand times.  This was no cat, or snake for that matter…. no this was clearly the deadly tree beast of Arboria… naturally I screamed: “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH”.  My ever helpful and caring family decided that this exact moment was the time to warn me against trying to turn the bathroom light on.   From downstairs I heard my brother “oh that reminds me, don’t try and turn the bathroom light on,” he sagely noted.  The idea behind warnings is that they are customarily issued in advance of any given danger, so this wasn’t so much a warning as it was a post-accident statement.  It might have even been sincere, if it were not immediately followed by the whooping sound of raucous laughter that appeared from all occupied areas of the house.  My family find a great many things amusing that any normal, sane person would not… chief amongst the causes of hilarity being pain and injury to a close relative – the greater the pain and more serious the accident, the funnier it is, apparently.  I don’t think my mother has laughed so hard since she accidentally tried to pile-drive my Nana into the floor by smashing her on the head with the boot door of an old Volvo estate.

My father told me that the bathroom light “was a bit dodgy” and in his infinite wisdom he had carefully placed the pyjama curtain there so as to warn people from attempting to use the light.  I briefly wondered what ancient law or custom once dictated that a blue paisley cloth meant danger.  You had to admire the camouflage though, I mean hell if this was designed as a trap it’d be considered a master stroke of tactical genius.  After the pain dissipated somewhat, and before the shock set in, I gingerly moved the pyjama curtain of paisley warning away to see what had attacked me.   At this point I realised that “a bit dodgy” was one of those typically British understatements.  The light switch was missing entirely, in its place were two live wires; a red one, and a black one.  When I reached my hand in try the light I had inadvertently completed the circuit and thus been on the receiving end of a 240 volt electric shock.

It is several hours later, I am still alive, and I am at home, 12.5 miles away.  I can, however, still hear my family laughing.

So I pumped my tyres up to 100psi and set off for work this morning at about 8.45am.  This is the first time I have cycled in my new cycling shoes and the corresponding pedals and I have to say I was quite impressed.  They are going to take a bit of getting used to, both in getting my feet into them on the move and also getting my feet out of them.  They are a lot better for my technique though, it’s a lot easier to pull on the upstroke as well as pushing on the down stroke.

Almost immediately I realised that my fitness has suffered greatly from having several weeks of inactivity.  I struggled from the off, and I could not keep the pace that I am used to at all.  On the one hand I am disappointed that I have let my fitness drop (and put on weight) but on the other hand it helped me to realise that I had actually got to quite a decent level in a short space of time, which has resolved me to keep up with it.

So I took my time, went at a fairly leisurely pace and didn’t try to take over much traffic in queues and such.   I managed to get my feet in and out of the clips okay.

At least I was doing, until this small incident near town.

I was cycling up the A6 (Garstang Road) and was approaching town, there was a standing queue of traffic and a lorry was too close to the curb for me to pass, so I stopped behind it.  Unfortunately on this occasion I completely failed to get my foot out of the clip.  So I am sat there, on my bike, with both feet affixed to the pedals, unable to free my foot in time.  My momentum came to an end and then time stopped, literally.   There was this two second moment that lasted for about an hour… and then I fell over.

It must have looked absolutely hilarious from behind, in front, to the side, or just about any perspective other than my own.  I crashed to the curb with a thunk, my head banged off the concrete, my knee took the full weight of the impact and my bike on top of it.    So there I am led half on the curb, half on the road with both feet stuck into my pedals and my bike on top of me.  I was thrashing about madly trying to free my feet so I could get up.  Just then a helpful passerby stopped to ask if I was ok.

The most unfortunate part of this whole event was the fact that the helpful passerby was one of the most attractive young women I have seen around this area for a long time, and on any other occasion I would have sparked up a conversation, made her laugh and gotten her number.

Now, I have put a bunch more weight on with the last few weeks of inactivity, and I have lost a lot of fitness.

Before I continue, just picture the scene if you can.

I am led on the floor, half on the path, half on the road, stuck to this bike which is on top of me.  I am in tight fitting cycling clothes, which I am almost bursting out of because I am a fat mess.  My face is bright red with exertion, my hair is about as unkempt as it gets, and is stuffed into a dorky looking cycling helmet.  I am unshaven and scruffy.  I have a pair of sunglasses on which make me look like I am auditioning for the part of “The Fly” in the film “The Fly”.  I am spattered with mud and other assorted detritus from the roadside.  I am sweating like Gary Glitter in a playground and I am flailing around like a fish out of water.

The look in this young lady’s eyes was one of genuine concern and pity, with some barely concealed mirth.

It has been a number of years since I have been quite as embarrassed as I was at that moment.

So I didn’t spark up a conversation, I didn’t make her laugh, and I most certainly didn’t ask for her number.  I might have shrugged it off and said something witty like “no it’s okay I am just having a little rest”.   I did none of this, I did what any sane, stable, balanced, and mature man might do in this situation.   I pretended to be French.

“Are you ok?”
“Ouais, c’est bon merci,” I mumbled.

The lady gave me a blank look (thank god she didn’t speak French).

“Juste un petit probleme, c’est bon, merci de votre aide,” I spluttered out.

Just then I finally managed to free my feet and get up.

“Tres embarrassant,” I laughed, trying too hard to sound casual.

I am fairly sure she didn’t buy it, I am fairly sure all I succeeded in doing was cementing the fact that I was insane in her mind.  I imagine she got to wherever she was going and immediately relayed the tale of how she met this fat weirdo who fell off his bike then pretended to be French.  At that moment a friendly looking Asian van driver honked his horn, which made me jump out of my skin.  I turned round to see the pleasent chap smiling and giving me a big thumbs up, as if to say “you ok mate?” or maybe “haha that was brilliant, do it again!”.

With that my ordeal was complete, I would not have been more embarassed if my clothes suddenly burst into flames while I simultaneously shit myself.

So I gingerly got back on my bike, complete with a sore knee and bruised ego and carried on my merry way.

As you can probably imagine, I’m not having a great day today.  I hope the cycle home is less eventful.

Firstly, two games that I have been waiting for for 4 and 2 years respectively came out.  Spore and Warhammer Online.  Both amazing games and I only stopped played one because of the other.  These are two games I will probably be playing during my spare time for at least the next couple of years.

The second, and more significant thing was that I tried to give up Pepsi Max, cold turkey.   This was an awful idea, and absolutely destroyed my sleeping schedule.  I had chronic insomnia and only managed to get to work on time by staying up all night every other night.   After ten days it still hadn’t settled down, even after starting drinking Pepsi again – so I took two holiday days off work to sort it out.

That was Wed/Thu last week, it almost did the trick but I was still off and ended up staying up all night Thursday.  On Friday at work we were celebrating our five year anniversary, we spent the day doing activities in Harrogate followed by an evening meal, boozy evening and a night over in a hotel (the Barcelo Majestic in Harrogate).  On Saturday I was in no fit state to cycle, as you might imagine, I spent most of the weekend recovering.

Monday, yesterday, however, I rode in to work!   I was absolutely determined to get back into it and not lose my motivation, and I did the journey in a record 35 minutes.  As part of my efforts to maintain my motivation I am going to put up a new “achievements” page which will double up as a goals page.   Basically I am going to set myself a load of tasks; weight related, distance/speed related, and so on.  These are goals I will work towards and try to complete on my journey.

Today I took my bike into the shop for its first service, I also bought some proper cycling shoes and the pedals to go with them.  I am looking forward to trying them out, but the bike will be in the shop until Thursday, so I wont get chance to try them out until Friday.

In the meantime I will get that goals page done!

Incidentally, if you happen to be playing Warhammer Online in Europe I am on the Dragonback Mountain server, come say hi!

This is a message for the driver of the double-decker bus that was driving up London Road towards Preston at approximately 6.30pm on Thursday 11th September 2008.  You may remember that around two thirds of the way up the hill, you beeped loudly as you passed a cyclist.  If you are this person I would like to offer you the opportunity to join me in a public house of your choice in the Lancashire area, whereupon I will purchase for you one pint of your favourite tipple.  After buying you your preferred beverage I will propose a toast, which has not yet been fully authored (I am working on it) but will almost certainly include various questions about your parentage, a number of speculations regarding your mental abilities, and perhaps a brief treatise on your uncanny resemblance to something I once saw in a toilet.  Once the toast is complete to my satisfaction I will christen our new friendship by anointing you with your cherished pint of grog.  You utter, utter cretin.

So as you can see from the mile-o-meter in the top right hand corner of this page, I cycled to work today.  I managed to fall asleep the right side of 2am for the first time this week, and so I set my alarm nice and early (7am).  My alarm went off in the morning as expected and I jumped out of bed with much enthusiasm.  In fact I was so enthusiastic in my depression of the snooze button that I cracked the case of my alarm clock.  About nine hundred snooze-button-mashes later I finally dragged myself out of bed and sat having a mental struggle trying to convince myself that I could make it to work in time without using the oh-so-tempting car.

I did cycle, and I felt better for doing it, but it was fairly hard work and I just about made it right on the dot.  I had a pretty productive day at work, but I unfortunately didn’t quite manage to finish the project that I was supposed to have completed on Tuesday, but it’s almost, almost there.  I really wanted to go out for lunch, a supermarket salad or a butty-van sandwich would have gone down nicely, but unfortunately everyone in the entire company had either already eaten or was not planning to leave the premises, so I had to settle for braving the on-site cafe.  I say braving here because one of the most unpleasant looking fellows I’ve ever had the misfortune to lay eyes upon happens to work at this cafe.   I have no idea what his proper name is, but everyone in the office calls him Manuel – as in the Spanish waiter from Fawlty Towers (spitting image).

The guy doesn’t look unpleasant in the sense that he is hideously disfigured or anything, he hasn’t got full facial burns, and neither of his eyes are dangling out of their sockets on exposed nerves.  He does, however, look ill.  Very, very ill.  I am not a doctor or anything, but if I were to hazard a guess I’d say he was dying from lung cancer at the very least.  He coughs, and coughs, and coughs, and coughs, then splutters, and coughs and coughs and coughs, then wipes his brow, then coughs and coughs and coughs.  All the time.  If you happen to have the misfortune to be served by him at this cafe, the best thing to do is discard the food and fast for the sake of your health.  I don’t know what his complaint is, but it could well be contagious.  I have actually considered making enquiries to the local council about his suitability to work in food and the status of his last basic hygiene test.  The best tactic, I have found, to avoid the unpleasantness associated with having to interact with him in any way, is to simply stand with your eyes locked on the menu looking particularly indecisive until he either goes away or serves someone else.   At which point you miraculously make up your mind that you wanted a ham sandwich and get one of the other, non-leprous, cafe staff to make it.

Today I managed to avoid having to avoid Manuel altogether, as the first person who asked me what I would like was the younger guy who works there, who is far less disease ridden, at least by outward appearance.  I ordered a chicken and feta cheese sandwich with lettuce and a little bit of mayo and salad cream.  The guy did look at me like I just asked if I could have a hard boiled testicle, but after confirming my order he went away to make it.  It was at this point that I noticed a rather nice, if not slightly plump, young lady who appears to have started working there.   On my triumphant return to the office a few minutes later my colleague asked if I had “seen the new girl” and “what did I think?”  To which I replied she seemed nice and that I would certainly not pass up the opportunity to spend some horizontal time with her, should the occasion arise.  In fact I think I may have to start eating more often from the on-site cafe to that end.  At the very least it will introduce a whole new level of complexity to the “avoid getting served by the leper” game, which will limit my potential alternative servers to one.

So that was lunch, often the highlight of my day, and the afternoon passed fairly quickly until it came time to cycle home.   I left fairly late, it was at least 6.15pm and I was supposed to be online for practice at 6.30pm (fat chance).  So I put in 80% effort from the off, hoping I could keep it up for the 35-45 minutes it took to get home.  This was going really well, I was speeding along in a low gear* and spinning** with a cadence*** of about 90 RPM.   I tried to keep my effort level constant the whole time by adjusting the gears slightly based on the incline of the road – basically trying to keep a constant cadence and effort level irrespective of the incline.  I was succeeding and I got to London road in record time.  London Road is the site of the largest hill I have to climb on the journey.  I was ready for it though!  I set my gears and kept up the pace and effort level and I was climbing the hill faster than I had ever before.  Perhaps my effort level was higher than 90% but whatever it was I was speeding up there.  It was hard work, but I felt that I could manage to keep up this effort level for the climb.  It was at this exact moment, about two thirds of the way up the hill, that a double-decker bus passed by dangerously close and had the nerve to beep his horn loudly at the moment where it’s proximity to me was optimal for maximum volume.

Well as you might expect, this scared the ever-living crap out of me and I completely lost my rhythm.  I was shocked and surprised for about five seconds after which the red mist descended and I started spitting teeth in random directions.  I remember standing up and waving various hand gestures at the back of the bus, while the air around me visibly darkened, then began fizzing and crackling, as a direct result of the seemingly endless stream of profanity barking from my mouth.  Other drivers who were negotiating the hill gave me an extra wide birth – in fact I had the entire lane to myself.  I immediately decided to chase the bus, which lasted about twenty seconds before my legs decided they didn’t want to do an all-out uphill sprint and ceased to function.  My rage was still in full swing and I must have been a fairly odd sight to any passer-by; slowly, gingerly pedalling up the hill with fits of foul language bursting out of me as if I were a Tourettes sufferer on crack.

I spent more or less the entire rest of the journey formulating plots of evil revenge in my head, and generally speculating about the social necessity of the continued existence of bus drivers.  I am fine now though; a couple of hours of shooting people in the face on the internet does wonders for one’s inner-calm.

*I figured out that in one of my other posts I was transposing low and high gears incorrectly, low is a harder gear (for downhill and flat) and high is an easy gear (for uphill).

**Spinning is the opposite of mashing.  Mashing is using overly low gears at a low cadence and spinning is using higher gears with a high cadence.  Apparently the latter is more effecient and uses a more sustainable type of muscle fiber.

***Cadence is the term used for the speed at which you pedal (RPM) 100+ is a very high cadence, 80-90 is a high cadence and anything below 80 is a low cadence (or at least that seems to be popular opinion, I haven’t done the research).

So why can’t I sleep?  I actually don’t know.   I’ve always been a bit of a night bird, and quite prone to insomnia.  I suspect that it might have something to do with my sudden change in routine.  I’ve gone from getting next to no exercise, smoking and eating a lot to trying to eat less (not diet just not indulge), not smoking and of course exercising more.  A lot more.  The other consideration is that I drink far too much caffeine.   I am addicted to two things, the first is smoking, and I haven’t had a cigarette for two weeks tomorrow – which I think is quite good going considering I really like to smoke.  My other addiction is going to be a lot more difficult to give up, I think.   It’s Pepsi Max.

I have been drinking 2-4 litres of Pepsi max more or less every day for the last ten years.

Pepsi Max is sugar free, but is loaded with caffeine and of course has those evil chemicals like Aspartame and Acesulfame.  I have long suspected that I have been addicted to either Pepsi Max or Caffeine and I more or less proved this when I tried to quit drinking it a couple of years ago.  After a few days I was experiencing a wide range of side effects, most notably irritation, increased aggression, extreme thirst , low energy levels, and insomnia.   I do think however that if I am going to reach my goal I am going to need to stop, and I also think the sooner the better.  So I haven’t had any at all today, I did have one can of Coke earlier but aside from that I have had no Caffeine and no Pepsi Max.   I am hoping that the effects of cycling will help counter some of the withdrawal symptoms, but I suppose we’ll see.   The most important thing for me is to find some way of solving my insomnia, and this step may well help.  Being overly tired in a morning (and throughout the day) is the number one barrier to my cycling as much as I want to.  Of the four days so far I haven’t cycled, three of them are down to insomnia/over-tiredness.

Now if I can sort my diet out I might start cooking with gas, as it were.

I am absolutely determined to cycle tomorrow, so I am going to go to bed at about 10 or 10:30 PM and I am going to stay there until I sleep, even if it takes hours.

Needless to say I rushed to the dryer in the shed and grabbed the stuff quick, but it was already dry.   I am not sure if anything untoward has happened to the shorts, they seemed okay though.  I guess I will find out tomorrow, I do hope they are ok though because I haven’t really got £40 to spend on another pair right now.

As you can probably tell by the mileage count in the top right hand corner of the screen; I did cycle to work today.  In fact I felt pretty ok considering, perhaps I will have one of those delayed effect days of stiffness and pain like you sometimes get after a heavy workout.

I’ve done a load of reading today, which inspired me to add a new page called Bookmarks – this is basically something I am going to use to store a list of articles and other things that I found useful or interesting.  I spent absolutely ages reading through loads of posts on the Cycling Info website.  This has got me thinking about how and when to implement a proper training routine.   Right now I am concentrating on doing as many miles as I can each week, getting used to cycling at different speeds, in different conditions and on different cycle routes.  I am also hoping to lose lots of weight in the process.  What I have been wondering to myself is exactly when I should start a routine.  Would it be better to start now, or wait until I have a reasonable fitness level and have lost weight?

You might notice another page at the top called Equipment.  Basically this is going to be a list of everything I am currently using, including clothing, accessories, bike, bike parts, helmet, shoes, chain lubricant, and so on.  I will keep it up to date with both a list of what I am currently using, as well as a historical list of the things I have used in the past and the dates between which I used them.  I had the idea to basically write proper reviews of all my gear.  There will be another category called, imaginatively enough, ‘Gear Reviews’, and all the items on the equipment page will link to their respective reviews.

Initially this idea was so that other people reading and thinking of getting into cycling can get information on the stuff I have used in my quest – and be able to see if anything might suit them, based on my experiences. As I thought about it more though, it made me realise that the last time I was regularly reviewing anything it was gaming grade computer peripherals – mice, keyboards, headsets, etc – and companies were sending me stuff to review.  Free stuff.  Which made me think; “hey, wait a minute!”.  I am thinking that if this blog gets a reasonable readership and amount of traffic I would be able to approach cycling component suppliers and manufacturers and offer to review their stuff, sort of like “cycling press”.

Right now I doubt any company would send me anything to try out, but it might be a really good way of getting some upgrades a bit further down the line, without trying to get proper sponsorship.   After all I would be offering a legitimate, personalised advertising opportunity to reach a targeted audience.  Of course if my reviews weren’t all that favourable they might just not send me anything again, on the other hand if they are sending me something that deserves a bad review I probably wouldn’t want anything else anyway – so hurray for honesty.

Oh I got an email back from Karen Reid by the way, it was a generic sort of “nice blog” email which pretty much said she hadn’t read it at all.  A bit disappointing but it’s way too early for a nutritionist anyway.

So I didn’t ride yesterday due to a late night playing Spore and I decided that to make up for it I would do an extra long ride today.   My plan was to set off from Barton and head north up the A6.  I figured I would cycle to Lancaster (about 16 miles away) and see how I feel when I got there.  I set off at 1.50pm and I got to Lancaster in short order, I am not sure what time it was because I didn’t stop and check, but I felt fine and so I carried on going.  I passed so much road kill on the way that I again reconsidered my idea for a website such as britishroadkill.com.  I could photograph and try and identify road kill I pass and post it on the website for general perusal.   Okay maybe it’s a bad idea, but I thought it might be slightly amusing.

I had a decision to make a few miles north of Lancaster; I had the opportunity to continue north along the A6 or turn west and head to Morecambe.  I had a moment of indecision – the Morecambe route would have been quite nice, and I could have cycled back south along the coast to Fleetwood, Thornton or Blackpool before heading east back home.   I might do that ride next weekend; we’ll see how it goes.  Anyway I continued north and shortly arrived in Carnforth, which is an absolutely lovely town.  I was riding along thinking what a really pleasant ride this was.  I had passed some of the nicest scenery Britain has to offer and was feeling quite happy.

No fatigue yet so I carried on. 

A few miles north of Carnforth the scenery changed.  It became more generic British countryside, fields, farms, cows, sheep, and so on.  The road got a bit boring too, dual carriageway with a heavily worn surface that was uncomfortable to ride on, as well as cars hurtling past me.  As well as the above, it seems like there is pretty much northing between Carnforth and Milnethorpe.  A few miles north of Carnforth I started to get a bit tired and sore, so I decided to turn around and come back at the next town.   The next town was Milnethorpe and was quite a bit further away than I was expecting.  

I arrived at Milnethorpe at 3.30pm, 1h 40mins after I set off.  The distance is about 30 miles so I averaged 33 minutes per 10 miles (3.3 minutes per mile) – which is a lot faster than my commute.  I was cycling along looking for somewhere to get something to drink (during the ride north I had two bottles of orange Gatorade) and possibly a bite to eat, when I came across a road sign which said it was only nine miles to Kendal.  Now once I got past Lancaster I started wondering if I could make it all the way to Kendal, knowing it was a good 40 miles away from home and that I would have to ride back.  I really wanted to do 68 or more miles in total if I could, so that I could break the 200 total miles cycled mark (which would have been over 150 miles in the last week alone).  So when I saw the sign saying it was only nine more miles I decided to really push myself.  That was a mistake.

Kendal is in the Lake District, one of the most beautiful National Parks in Britain.  It is called the Lake District because it is full of lakes – primarily because most of the Lake District is in the Pennines – a series of hills and mountains – the “spine” of Britain.   Consequently the ride was pretty much all uphill from Milnethorpe.  Combine this with the fact that I was already pretty tired and the result was that the nine miles from Milnethorpe to Kendal took me an hour.  When I got to Kendal I was sore.  My bum was saddle sore, my arms were aching, my legs were aching and my left knee was painful.   My feet were also quite numb.  I realised I had pushed myself too far right about the exact same time I realised that I still had to cycle the 40 miles back home.

So I decided to have a bit of a rest, it was only 4.30PM but all the shops and cafes were closed, to my surprise.  Various pubs were open but I didn’t want to eat that much and I didn’t want to sit in a pub in my lump-hugging cycling gear.  So I cycled through Kendal until I found something open.  It was a McDonalds.  Now McDonalds is my least favourite fast food place at the best of times, but when trying to lose weight, get fit and healthy, it is about as far from what I want and need as you can get.  So I cycled on.   Eventually I found a little newsagent’s and went inside.  I bought myself two more drinks (berry and orange Lucozade Sport), a tuna sandwich, and two cereal bars.  I cycled around a bit more to find somewhere nice to sit and eventually settled for a bench under a tree outside a pub called the Globe Inn.  While I ate my sandwich I sent myself a text message noting the times of my journey as well as the place I was at and the time I planned to set off home (so I could write it up properly and also Google maps the distances).  After about 20 minutes I set off on the return journey.

The return journey started off ok.  The first ten miles or so wasn’t too bad, I was pretty sore but I was managing ok, in retrospect this was probably because it was mostly downhill.  When I passed through Milnethorpe again though, I hit what I believe is termed in sport as “the wall”.  All of a sudden my legs didn’t want to move, and all my aches and pains flared up at the same time to a combined effect of near agony.  It was the first uphill that did it I think, I attacked it like I usually do on small hills, stood up on the pedals and pushed myself through it without changing down a gear.   Around about the top of the hill my legs just went to jelly.  I quickly dropped down loads of gears and even though I was cycling down the other side of the hill in a low gear my legs wouldn’t keep up a pace.  I was probably pumping out less than 50 RPM.  This lasted for a good five minutes before I somewhat recovered and was able to put the gears back up and increase the pace back up to about 70-80 RPM.  The following ten miles were pure torture.  I was in real pain from various part of my body.   My hands were very sore, I was very saddle sore, my arms were aching and my feet were aching – and I could feel my thighs cramping up whenever I stopped at traffic lights.  I struggled along and for every mile I rode I must have contemplated calling someone to pick my up a dozen times.

When I got to Lancaster I thought I was done.  I felt like I was running on empty and my legs had gone from being sore to actually burning – I could feel the heat from them.   I almost went the wrong way and then turned around and corrected myself.   I cycled up through Lancaster, a very hilly city, and at the other side was faced with yet another hill to climb to get out of Lancaster.  I had to stop; I really couldn’t go any further.

So I sat myself down on the sidewalk with my back against a wall trying to recover.  I had a little drink and ate the other cereal bar that I was saving for the return journey should I need it.  I probably stopped for about 10-15 minutes before feeling slightly refreshed.   I didn’t jump back on the bike straight away though; I walked for about half a mile until my bum and feet had stopped being numb.  Then I got back on and cycled out of Lancaster.  Once I got out of Lancaster I recovered somewhat again, and while I was still in pain I was pumping out 80-90 RPM in the top gear my bike does.   The road was relatively flat and I was speeding along at 25-30 MPH.  I managed to keep up this pace for another ten miles, taking me to within ten miles of home, then my steam ran out and I spent the last ten miles really fighting for every revolution and fighting my willpower not to stop this close to home.

I knew my pace was really slow but I had nothing left in the tank.  When I finally saw Barton Grange, the garden centre I live next-door to, I was so happy I could have kissed the sign out front.  It was 7.50pm – it had taken me three full hours to cycle the 40 miles back from Kendal (with at least 15-25 minutes of stops/walking).  I got in, did a bit of stretching, took a Hedex painkiller and then Googled the map and did a blog entry for the cycle route.   I then had a long relaxing bath before playing a few practice games of Counter-Strike source with my team.

I am sitting here now about ready to go to bed and wondering how sore I am going to be when I wake up.  I really hope I am capable of cycling in to work, but I might be a bit too stiff and sore.  We’ll see.

So that’s the end of my first full week of cycling.  All in all I feel like I have had a pretty good first week, although technically it has been ten days.  A total of 211 miles cycled, 164 in the last seven days, which gives me an average of 21 miles per day for every day since my cycling began (and that counts two days where I did no cycling at all, so actually I’ve done 211 miles in 8 days if you think about it, just over 26 miles per day).  If I can keep this rate up I should be pretty fit by March/April when road race and time trial seasons starts.

In other news I got an email a few days ago from Karen Reid who is a qualified sports dietitian – her web presence is known as Performance Food.  She asked me to join her as an affiliate for a web conferencing company called Ozone Conferencing.  The company offers phone and video conferencing and it’s main marketing message is that they are trying to save the planet by reducing the amount that business people travel for meetings.   A noble goal I suppose, although I suspect their primary ambition is to sell their product – but hey it’s a win-win so if you have business conferencing needs and want to save money, cut travel costs and help save the environment at the same time, check it out.  I get a nice wadge of cash for every referral so use my link if you’re going to sign up.

I know Karen through an e-sports article I wrote a while back called “Eat Well, Go Pro”.  It was an investigation into how much (if any) impact proper diet could have on gaming performance.   Karen was very professional and extremely helpful.  I interviewed her for the piece and it was extremely well received in the community.   I must get around to writing the second article.

Anyway this gave me an idea, I wonder if Karen might be interested in supporting my endeavour now, or maybe in the future.  She is exactly the kind of person I need support from and so I am going to send her an email as soon as I am done with this blog entry, hopefully it will be well received.

I’ll make a post tomorrow and let you know how sore I am in the morning, and whether or not I manage to cycle into work tomorrow.

A – Cycle Route Start (Home)

B – Milnthorpe – This is where I got to when I felt like I’d done a good run.

C – Cycle Route Destination: Kendal, in the Lake District – a lovely town where I had a 20 minute rest outside the Globe Inn.

D - Cycle Route Finish (Home)

Total Distance: 78.9 Miles (Round Trip)
Frequency Cycled: 1-4 times per month.

After the awful day I had on Thursday, Friday was considerably better.   For a start I cycled into work, even though it was absolutely horrendous weather.  It took me less than 40 minutes, which was good.  Had quite a productive day at work, got quite a bit on my current project done.  Also went out for a game of bowling at lunchtime.  I feel really bad about that actually.  Let me explain…

A few weeks ago a few colleagues went out for lunch, and while we were at the pub we had a game of pool, or rather, I put some money in the table and asked if anyone would play.   Now before I go any further let me point out that I haven’t played pool for a good year and a half, if not longer, but back when I was playing regularly I was pretty good, easily good enough to compete and do well in the local league at least.  So anyway, my colleague Paul took up the offer and asked if I was any good.  I said no, probably not as I hadn’t played for ages.  Unfortunately my skills hadn’t deteriorated as much as I expected and I absolutely trounced him, including a 7-ball.  I haven’t heard the end of it since; it gets brought up whenever we’re in the vicinity of a pool table.

So anyway, we went bowling and I was fully expecting to be soundly beaten, Paul plays twice a week in leagues and is pretty good.  I joked before we started that this would be the revenge for the pool, and he agreed it would be payback time.   Now without going into too much detail about how absolutely awful the place was, and the fact that we played one of the games with the barrier things up, the short version is that I bowled 154 then 155 and won both games.   Those scores are really, really good for me, my all time personal best is only 165 – and Paul (who can get 210+) didn’t play well at all – by his own admission.    Still, he seemed a tiny bit miffed at it.  I’m a competitive person, but there are situations where I don’t mind losing – and this was one of them.  I really wanted to see him bowl 200+ and destroy me – at least that way I could have played well and still lost.    Oh well maybe next time.    I am sort of hesitant to suggest any more gaming/sporting activities unless I can find something I totally suck at and Paul is amazing at.

It was raining heavily all day and it did not let up at all for the cycle home.  I was thoroughly drenched within 3 minutes of setting off – and in addition there was now quite a gusty wind.   This would be the first time I have cycled in inclement weather, and I found it a little more difficult than dry weather.  I figure I am carrying loads more weight as me and everything I am wearing is sodden, I spent half the time riding through puddles/standing water and obviously the wind in my face didn’t help.  Still I made it home in the usual time of about 40 minutes, so it wasn’t too bad.   Actually I really enjoyed the ride, so much in fact that at one point I was speeding along and singing out loud… various songs, including of course “Singing in the Rain”.  I had some more incidents with motorists, one truck in particular got a loud knock on the door of his cab, but on the whole I am starting to get used to ignorant motorists and just shrug their shenanigans off.

I could have done more cycling on Friday but I really wanted to play Spore so I went straight home and bought and downloaded it.  Great game, go and buy it now!  A very late Friday night led to a very late wake up on Saturday, so late in fact that I didn’t have enough hours of daylight left for a decent ride.   I decided to give it a miss in favour of an extra long ride on Sunday.  Speaking of which, on Sunday I plan to cycle up the A6 to Lancaster, and when I get to Lancaster I will see how I feel.  If I feel okay I will continue further and see how far I get.   I would post the cycle route now, but as I don’t know where I will end up I figure I may as well post the cycle route when the ride is done.   Look for that sometime tomorrow.

I am now going to grab a few hours sleep so that I am refreshed and ready for tomorrow’s ride.

I got my hair trimmed on the way home and the girl cutting my hair took absolutely ages.  I swear she must have been cutting it with eyebrow scissors or something.   I was going to be late for CSS practice, I had warned one of my team mates but I was actually half an hour later than the time I had said (which was already an hour and a half late).  The only chance I was going to get to eat was to grab something en-route and the only take away near the haridressers was… a generic kebab/pizza/burger shop.   Needless to say my “meal” was about as unhealthy as it gets.

On the plus side, today marked my first full week since my last cigarette, and I guess having a rest day isn’t so bad.  Although stuffing my face with unhealthy food at both lunch and dinner probably wasn’t the best idea – and made me feel worse than I already did.

Oh well, tomorrow is another day.