Forgive Me Father, For I Have Sinned!

It has been 4 months since my last post and in that time I have driven my car to work instead of cycling.
What should be my penance?

Since November we've only had one car but at the start of the April we got another one so I've now got two options for commuting.
I have to admit it but I have taken the car a few times.

To make matters worse April was meant to be #30daysofbiking where a lot of people are cycling everyday for a month however not me.
I've had my shortest month of the year with only 162 miles.

I knew about the challenge in March and thought about giving it a go but looking at the calendar I knew there were going to be a few difficult days. I knew I was going up to see my brother and his family for a few days in London. Due to car issues I wasn't planning on taking my bike. I did end up taking my bike to London and went on some great rides with Pete, more about that later.
Therfore I decided not to even bother joining the challenge.

My next excuse is that my knee went wrong again.
I finally relented and joined Tony "Boot Camp" Busby for a workout in the gym at work.
It was brutal!
Unsurprisingly it stirred things up in my pelvic area, which I've twisted out of place playing rugby years ago.
When this happens I usually get a sore knee and I have to spend a few days on my foam roller.
This time it has lasted for a few weeks and this has restricted my cycling, or more accurately giving me another excuse.
It is getting better and I will do more boot camps with Tony as I need to build my core strength.

London calling

As mentioned I did take my bike up to London when visiting my brother and we went for a nice couple of rides.
One of the was along the Thames Path and we had some lovely views.



We also took out some banana bikes which were great fun.



While in London we had to do the tourist bit and saw the changing of the guards and then had some fun in Hamleys.
On the trip we were lucky enough to see one of the yellow Boris bikes.



The first of many!

Later on in the month we managed to take advantage of the surprisingly good bank holiday Monday weather and organised a bike ride with 3 other families along the Hayling Billy. It is a old railway track running up one side of Hayling Island.


Le Grand Depart.



We parked at the beach and after the 7 mile round trip had the first bbq of the year on the beach.



Weight for it!

I had a great start to the year losing 4kg taking me down to 110kg.
But the scales have got stuck.
I need to lose one more kg to have lost 25kg in total.

I have being using the MyFitnessPal app on and off for the last few months. I do need to use it everyday as it is a powerful tool.
One thing I've noticed is that I'm relying too much on exercise to hit my calorie goal. The problem is when I don't exercise I eat too many calories for any weight loss.
Therefore I'm going to focus on sticking to my target by eating less and using the extra calories from exercise as the icing on the cake.

My main area to focus on is portion size, so no more seconds.

Sounds easy........

I hit more goals than Manchester United!

A good year.
Doing over 2000 miles in one year was hard work. I hadn't noticed I was getting close till the end of November. It was then I realised that I would have to do my second longest month to hit the target, not really what you want in December. Work and family commitments were against me as well.
I had to drive in to work for most days during the first two weeks, and then I had things to do for a couple of weekends.
So it came down to December 31st, with 21 miles to go. I checked the weather and it was due to clear up in the afternoon, so I waited, and actually fell asleep on the sofa, but managed to drag my butt out and get in the last few miles.
It wasn't the nicest rides of the year, a late down pour and then my pedal almost fell off, but I made it.
I got home and there were two posters from my wife and daughter congratulating me.

I have mentioned it before why it is so important to share your goals. If I hadn't told anyone, especially my family, I think I would have stayed asleep on the sofa. But every time I came back from a ride my daughter was helping me work out how many more miles I needed to do.

2013 Goals

99kg
Nowhere near, I'm still at 112kg, so hardly any loss, but I wasn't completely focused on the weight. I stopped going to the nurse every month and didn't have scales at home, so couldn't track it.
But I'm a lot fitter than last year.
I've got some scales now, and I'm back on track. I'm still using MyFitnessPal app, and through blogs I've got some fellow app users to lose weight together. So once again sharing goals, and successes is helping.

130 miles a month
Smashed!
I averaged 167 miles a month. A lot of this is down to the fact that I can cycle to work now, it is only a 10 mile round trip, but they all add up.
I also joined Fareham Wheelers and have been on their club rides 3 times, which are between 30 and 50 miles depending if I cycle out to Wickham or not.
My target this year is 155 miles. I've chosen this figure because Strava have monthly challenges, and if you do 155 miles or 250km you get a "badge".
I'm sure I will push it and go over 2000 miles again, but I want to focus more on my weight loss, and I think the cycling will take care of itself.

Meon Riser
The goal was to do this in 4:10 for the hilly 47 miles. I did it in 4:07, but it was very hard work.
This year I'm going to smash the 4 hour mark.

New Forest Rattler
The goal was to either get a Silver time for the shorter route or a Bronze time for the longer route. Unfortunately Haribo Joe had major surgery a few months before, and didn't have time to get back in shape, but you never leave your wing man. I owe a lot to Joe, he really encouraged me at the start and he had to wait at the top of the hills for me.
I don't think I'm going to be able to do this ride this year as I'm hoping to do the Ride London the week before, but we'll see.

Fort Nelson
This is the first ride I did with Joe. When I say "did", I should really say struggled with, it took nearly 2 hours.
My goal was to beat my best time of 58:34 and go under 55 minutes.
I did it in 54:45 minutes.

Sultan Bus Route
This is a route around Fareham and Gosport so quite flat and just over 15 miles.
The goal was to do it in under an hour, which I did, in a time of 57:35.

BHF Round the Harbours
I've done this ride 3 times, but never broke the 3 hour mark, so that was my goal.
I couldn't do the official ride,but knew the route and did it in 2 hours 48.

Cycle round the Isle of Wight
This just never happened, so is back on the list this year.
I think it will be great day out, and probably will be 100 miles in total.

I'm going to carry on going out with the Fareham Wheelers every few weeks. It's nice to go out with other people and learn new routes.
I've only got one sportive definitely planned, but would like to do the Mega Meon again, and beat my time. But I'm not sure if I can fit it in.

Losing weight is the main, focus and I will get down double digits by the start of next year.

Thanks for reading and feel free to leave a comment, your support is always welcome.

Happy New Year and good luck with whatever you a planning to do.

A Little Help From Your Friends

I have posted about the power of sharing your goals before, here's the link.

Here are a couple of more examples.

2000 miles this year

I'm getting close to doing 2000 miles this year, last year I managed 1260, so it will be a massive achievement.
However with work and family commitments it is looking difficult to get out enough.
But I decided to give it a go and mentioned it to friends and family, who have all been veey supportive.
The extra support and the fact that it's not a secret any more meant I managed to do nearly 30 miles in the last couple of days.
At the time of posting I still have 135 miles go but I'm confident I will do it.

My Fitness Pal

This the app I use to track my calories.
I've used it for over a year and it has helped. However I had slacked off a bit, and because I wasn't watching what I was eating, it was a bit out of control.

A couple of weeks ago I got a notification that Toby, who writes the www.fatcyclerider.co.uk blog about how he has lost an impressive amount of weight, was now following me.
Therefore I had to start using it again, and it has helped to me to improve my diet again.

If you are using the app feel free to follow me, user name DBuckney, and we'll get there together.

Rubbish week eating rubbish food

I don't claim to have the best diet in the world, I like a treat every now and then, but this week there have been too many treats.

According to the MyFitnessPal app that I use, I'm 2900 calories over my weekly target, which is shocking seeing as I was 1959 calories under the week before.

I haven't been able to cycle into work once this week, and only went to the gym once so really I should eat less. I don't know why but if I don't exercise I seem to just want to eat rubbish food all the time.

I did have fairly genuine excuses for not cycling into work, but I could have found more time to go to the gym at work more often. A lot of people go at lunch time, which would be perfect, apart from the fact that I do sweat a lot for a fat bloke, and it is uncomfortable for the next hour. So I prefer to go straight after work, but energy levels can be quite low at that time of day.

The main reason I didn't cycle into work a couple of times was that my batteries had run out on my torch, which meant that I couldn't even go out cycling in the evening.
I've got some nice new rechargeable ones now, so that's another excuse out the window.

This lack of cycling has also effected my chances of hitting 2000 miles for the year.
I'm currently on 1838, having done 68 miles this month. It should have been more as that is only 2 rides.
There are 3 more weekends this month, so it is still possible.

200 miles in a month!

This is the second month that I've managed to do over 200 miles, which I'm really pleased with seeing as my target was only 132 miles a month.
I'm still gutted about only doing 81 miles in May, but I have made up for it by pushing my average up to 161 miles a month.

I did go out for my second ride with Fareham Wheelers at the start of the month. I was extra keen and cycled the 8 miles out to Wickham rather than drive. This, with the ride home took the total distance to 49.8 miles. My bike computer showed over 50, but when I checked Strava later it showed only 49.8. If I had known I would gone round the block to hit the 50 miles mark.

It was a nice ride out, I went with the "Social" group, but some of the hills weren't that social. But is was great to find some new routes and get the experience of cycling in a group. Drafting or sitting close behind someone makes a massive difference, you just get pulled along without much effort.

I've also managed to get Haribo Joe back out on his bike a couple of times this month, which was great. One of the rides was with two other friends, Chris and Paul who are also just getting back into cycling. The plan was to make it a regular ride, but it has only happened the once so far, wrong time of the year to be starting things like that.

I keep looking at my total figure of 1770 and wondering if hitting the 2000 mark will be possible this year. It would mean doing my second highest total for a month, in probably the worst month of the year, bad weather, going away for Christmas and any other excuse I can think of. 

It might be the wrong attitude but I often prefer not to set massive targets, because I prefer to hit my targets. This limiting belief, as they call it, is probably holding me back in a lot of areas, so it is something I need to think about.

As always please feel free to leave any comments or suggestions that you think might help me or other readers.

Still on track!

 

Its been a while since my last update, but I'm glad to report that I'm smashing last year figures.

There has only been one month, May, where I didn't hit my monthly goal of 132 miles but that was down to my dodgy knee keeping me off the bike for a few weeks.

But my monthly average is at 157 miles, which I'm pleased about.

 

A lot of the extra miles have been cycling to my new job, it's about 4 to 6 miles depending upon which route I take. During the summer I can't think of a better way to end a day at work than a nice bike ride with part of it along the coast.

It wasn't so nice last week when it was dark and I had a basic light. There are two types of lights, see and be seen.

I had a "be seen" light and I was confident other cars could see me, but it was a bit of guess work along some of the country lanes I go down.

Since then I have borrowed Haribo Joe's Hope Vision One light and it makes a massive difference, I could see where I was going.

 

I have been for a couple of rides with the local cycling club www.fareham-wheelers.org.uk/ which was really good. Nice to find some new routes and get the experience of riding in a group, which is quite daunting. There are usually only about 12 people in a group, so you have to be careful about what other riders are doing but you do get dragged along at a good speed.

 

I used to go to the doctors to get weighed, but I haven't been for a few months, but I'm confident that I'm still losing weight, or maybe my clothes have just got that little bit bigger.

I've almost reached the worst part of losing weight where I need to go shopping for new clothes, can't think of anything worse.

 

It is getting harder to get out due to the weather but I just need to man up and deal with the rain, you can only get so wet.

A Few Of My Favourite Things

Last Monday I had a lovely day off work going for a bike ride with my daughter and then a pub lunch with my wife.
Just missing a few rain drops on roses and whiskers on kittens.

The bike ride was along the Hayling Billy which is an old railway line down the side of Hayling Island.
It's pretty flat but not suitable for road tyres so I had to go on my brother in law's bike.

Most of the way you get lovely views of Langstone Harbour. It is possible to cycle all the way around the harbour, you need to get the ferry across to Eastney, and back up a cycle path along the Eastern Road. I think it is about 15 miles.

We've done it before where we've cycled all the way to the bottom of the Island, had lunch at a pub on the beach and cycled back, about 10 miles in total.

Unfortunately Mrs B's knee was playing up so she waited on the beach for us with our dog. So Lilly and I only went as far as the bmx track, where I had to have a go over a few of the jumps.
Heavy bloke on a heavy bike doesn't equal much air.

We then cycled back, found the wife and drove to The Royal Oak for fish and chips in the garden.

On the bike ride I said to Lilly "I love spending time with you and I love cycling, so I'm having a great day".

She replied "I love spending time with you and I don't mind cycling".

We're getting there!