Have you been to busy to cycle? Or just been lazy and not bothered?
I
should have been too busy because I desperately need to earn more money but I can't use that as an excuse. I'm sat in front of my computer for hours a day not being very productive. I could easily spare a couple of hours to go out riding.
I'm very lacking in motivation. That's one reason why I organise so many forum rides round here. It's so much easier to make the effort when there are other people involved.
To be honest, there's depression too. I feel down a lot of the time. Lots of reasons for it, all perfectly good reasons, the kind of life stuff that most people cope with somehow; I think I just had too many stressful and depressing things happening one after another over a long period of time -
bam, bam, bam!
I'm not lazy. When I do get out on the bike it is very hard for me being the size I am and living where I do, but I'm happy to put the effort in.
What do you count as a 'ride', Colin? I would have thought, totalling up distances, miles or Km, would give a more quantifiable measure. Have you got that data to hand?
I could work out the total distance, but to be honest there is no way that the average distance would be more than 40 miles, so even if we said that, it would only be about 1,000 miles for the year, probably a bit less. That's probably my worst year since 1991!
It's a bit hard quantifying rides though isn't it? 25 miles with no hills done in 5 hours is ridiculously easy. A hilly 25 mile ride done in an hour would be ridiculously hard.
Mind you, when I ride by myself, I nearly always go at what for me is a hard steady pace. I wouldn't be able to utter complete sentences without drawing breath, but I wouldn't be gasping between words, That kind of effort.
Non-forum rides would typically be hilly and 2-3 hours. Sometimes as short as 90 minutes, occasionally 6 or 7 hours. The forum rides tend to be hilly 50 milers.
Anyway, I suppose I out-score you on the basis of number of rides, if each 2-mile commute counts as a ride. But what of it? I feel quite pleased with myself, actually, this week so far (and it's only Wednesday) I've done three lunchtime rides from work - i.e. every day so far. It's been a good many months since I've been able to boast that (depression and all that sh!t taking its toll).
Ah, depression ... It's a bugger, isn't it! The stupid thing is that riding my bikes is one of the few things that makes me feel good, but feeling bad makes it hard to get out on the damn things in the first place! It's extremely rare that I turn round on a ride and come home prematurely. If I make the effort to go out, I do the ride. It's overcoming the inertia that is the problem.
And one of the lunchtime spins was what I suppose I would call my 'hilly 10-miler'. Small beer to anyone domiciled in Hebden bridge, but hilly nonetheless! I managed it, dragging all of my 95Kg up the hills, though I was whacked.
I think one of my problems is that I tell myself that it isn't worth going out unless I'm going to do 20+ hilly miles and when I'm struggling to make the effort, that puts me off. I actually think that hilly 10 mile rides are great, and can be very beneficial. In fact, I was toying with starting to do one of my own. The Keighley Road climb from Hebden Bridge is about 4.5 miles in length and ascending about 1,100 ft. I could do a warm-up on my gym bike and then ride up the climb as fast as I could, then turn round at the top and enjoy a rapid descent. I could pretty much squeeze that into an hour.
I'm also seriously thinking that trying to lose weight is on - I was shirking back, with the feeling that it was going to be stressful and stress would lead to more d., and so on. But I think I can make something positive of it.
Perhaps we ought to work on this together, albeit at a distance and via the forum. We're more or less similar in age.
Go for it! I remember there being a weigh loss thread somewhere. I don't know if it is still running. I'll have a look in the morning.
I have tackled my weight a few times before. From experience, I know that for me, lots of beer, but no cycling = gain weight. Lots of beer and lots of cycling = slow weight loss. Some beer and lots of cycling = loss of about 1.0-1.5 pounds a week. Little or no beer + lots of cycling = 2.0+ pounds a week loss.
I usually give the beer up altogether and make rapid progress, but eventually I miss it and crack. I think this time I'll give myself a generous allowance of 10 beers a week and stick to it, though preferably not drinking the full allowance most weeks.
Heck - guess what? I have beer in the fridge and am about to go downstairs and drink it!
Okay, I'll turn over a new leaf starting on Monday. I have things to sort out before then so I know that I'm not going to make big changes in the next couple of days.
I'll try and do 3 or 4 rides a week outdoors, the easiest of which would be be a warm-up plus my 4.5 mile climb and descent. If the weather is crap and I don't want to go out, I can substitute a hard 1 hour ride on my gym bike.
I will do some walking on the other days. The shortest walk I normally do is straight up a steep hill to the village of Heptonstall, a 500 ft ascent. I start with a road that is at least 20% gradient and it hardly falls much below about 12% all the way up.
I don't log individual rides but in 2009 it was 10,000 miles; last year just 5,000 and this year not even 50
10,000 was great. 5,000 is probably more like what I used to do. 50 - er, even I have done 89 miles this year - get stuck in!
I think potsy has a target of averaging 10 miles a day. That isn't a bad target to start with, since I definitely haven't managed that since 2007. That means I'm about 370 miles down for the year to date!
(Blimey - talk of the devil - he's only gone and posted about it while I was typing this little lot out! Yes Dave. there's more to come ...
)
- like the back of your hand!
