After last year’s failure in this (mechanical issues not ‘me’ issues) I managed to achieve what I wanted and completed the challenge set by Strava and Rapha to cycle 500km (320 miles) between Christmas Eve and New Years Eve.
Last year my plan had been worked out as a daily average where I was to go out and ride between 40 and 50 miles a day, but this fell apart when my bike did likewise, and having this daily set distance did not allow for much (if any) flexibility, plus trying to motivate myself to go out on 2 rides which were essentially on the same route on the same day was difficult and felt more like a chore than anything enjoyable.
This time round I decided to hit the ground hard (or hit the road hard in this case) and try to get as much done as soon as possible, especially with the weather being favourable. I also planned on not cycling the same route twice, although some stretches of road would be covered twice or in opposite directions; the whole point was not to let the cycling become a chore.
As documented on the blog previously, I went out on Christmas Eve and chalked-off 100 of those miles in the first day, so come Christmas Day the pressure was off with regards to getting out and putting down some big miles, so I went out for around 20 (with an arse that felt like concrete from the previous day’s exertion). Boxing Day saw an increase to 32 - both of these routes keeping me close to home on well-cycled routes of mine.
After the 2 day break over the weekend for the ostrich running I needed to get back into the longer rides to complete the challenge successfully, so a trio of 38, 80 and 42 miles brought me to my target with much relief to be had for my very sore backside.
Forcing myself to cycle routes I had not done so before gave me a greater idea as to where I can take myself in the future and I certainly enjoyed being out on the road with my iPod on listening to my podcasts, savouring the sights of the countryside. It also has helped me to keep very active over Christmas and minimise the potential for any weight gain as I was going to be damned if I was to cut-down on any of the good food and drink that was to be around this week.
Whilst clocking-up this mileage is impressive, and I am pretty chuffed with myself for achieving this at the second attempt, LSS was not impressed with me for doing so: She has informed me in no uncertain terms that if I am to repeat this in the future and essentially disappear for Christmas week on my bike - one of the few times when you can guarantee to be off from work at the same time as each other, then my bike will be dismantled and disposed of in various places along the canal.
The boss has spoken!
Eat pies.
Drink beer.
Cycle far.
Running for the pies
Showing posts with label Strava. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Strava. Show all posts
Tuesday, 7 April 2015
Monday, 16 March 2015
24th December: Hundo
Today was the first day of the Strava Rapha Festive 500 Challenge. The nature of this is to cycle 500km between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. You can have as many or as few rides as you desire, you just need to get those 500k’s under your belt.
I failed at this challenge last Christmas, so I was determined to make a good go of it, so having finished work yesterday I had a clear day to go for a ride so I could hit the ground running so as to speak and chalk-off a few miles.
The route I had chosen was to cycle to the centre of London and back again, with my turning point being Waterloo Bridge, crossing the Thames before returning home. I have cycled into central London in the past, but on that occasion I hopped on a train back - and the fact that a single home from Waterloo is £30 I decided that there was another good incentive to return under my own steam!
It has been a few years since I have been in the centre of London, having lived there when I studied at uni and working there from graduation until my early 30’s, so it was interesting to see the changes - and there have been plenty of them, to the west end.
My route in was to follow the A30 in from Hook, past Heathrow at the bottom of the runway with the planes landing over your head, through Kensington, along Hyde Park, Piccadilly, Trafalgar Square, the Embankment, Waterloo, Westminster, Victoria, Chelsea and where half of my family hails from: Parson’s Green, before heading further out via Putney, Mortlake, Sunbury, Ashford and back on to the A30 once more at Staines for the final leg home.
Whilst lovely to traverse some familiar London streets of my past and to see the changes to the skyline, the cycling itself was a bit of a pain in the arse because as soon as you hit central London it really is stop-start with traffic lights every 50 metres, so you have no chance of getting a rhythm going!
On the way back along the A30 I realised as night fell that I was closing-in on a potential milestone and the chance to do something I had not managed before. Whilst my initial route was planned to be 85 miles, I figured, why not make it a round 100! so as I approached Winchfield, I went off and cycled the route I normally cover with Kelv on our weekly evening ride… And returned home with 102 miles under my belt and pretty much 1/3 of the miles chalked-off in a oner.
Eat pies. Drink beer. Cycle far!
I failed at this challenge last Christmas, so I was determined to make a good go of it, so having finished work yesterday I had a clear day to go for a ride so I could hit the ground running so as to speak and chalk-off a few miles.
The route I had chosen was to cycle to the centre of London and back again, with my turning point being Waterloo Bridge, crossing the Thames before returning home. I have cycled into central London in the past, but on that occasion I hopped on a train back - and the fact that a single home from Waterloo is £30 I decided that there was another good incentive to return under my own steam!
It has been a few years since I have been in the centre of London, having lived there when I studied at uni and working there from graduation until my early 30’s, so it was interesting to see the changes - and there have been plenty of them, to the west end.
My route in was to follow the A30 in from Hook, past Heathrow at the bottom of the runway with the planes landing over your head, through Kensington, along Hyde Park, Piccadilly, Trafalgar Square, the Embankment, Waterloo, Westminster, Victoria, Chelsea and where half of my family hails from: Parson’s Green, before heading further out via Putney, Mortlake, Sunbury, Ashford and back on to the A30 once more at Staines for the final leg home.
Whilst lovely to traverse some familiar London streets of my past and to see the changes to the skyline, the cycling itself was a bit of a pain in the arse because as soon as you hit central London it really is stop-start with traffic lights every 50 metres, so you have no chance of getting a rhythm going!
On the way back along the A30 I realised as night fell that I was closing-in on a potential milestone and the chance to do something I had not managed before. Whilst my initial route was planned to be 85 miles, I figured, why not make it a round 100! so as I approached Winchfield, I went off and cycled the route I normally cover with Kelv on our weekly evening ride… And returned home with 102 miles under my belt and pretty much 1/3 of the miles chalked-off in a oner.
Eat pies. Drink beer. Cycle far!
Monday, 11 November 2013
10th November: Inspired
After the blow-out of last week where through working stupid hours I managed the grand total of 0 minutes exercise and with the CTS Gower marathon looming on the horizon I really needed to redouble my efforts in exercising/ training this week no matter how late the finish of my work or what the weather was like.
Having to confess to my fellow hamsters on Facebook on Sunday about not having managed anything, my paltry performance was brought in to perspective by Beth Risdon, author of the Shut Up and Run blog that I follow, who was in action in the Florida Iron Man race the previous day.
Beth had posted her race number on line and you could follow her progress through the Iron Man website, so all day from the off I was checking-in on a regular basis to see how she was faring. She has become an Iron Man (should that be Iron Woman?) from scratch in the space of a few months. She runs a great deal anyway so had a good level of fitness to start with and had completed triathlons and a half iron man in past years but doing an Ironman was not on her radar until she was approached to do one! You can read her account of her achievement on the blog with her entries for the run, the bike and the swim, and those waves getting in to the sea looked pretty damned gnarly!
Seeing Beth going about her way to finishing the Ironman was awesome, and a real motivator to get off my sorry arse and do something!.. And there was also another couple of motivators as well.
This week the organisers of the Brutal run series in whose events I have run have started a running club on Strava, which I use for tracking my cycling, with the intention of allowing those who run in their events to keep tabs on how they perform against others in training or running in general each week. At the same time, one of my clients in the village who is a keen XC runner with her dog and is getting involved in CaniX running also set-up a running club for the village so those who sign-up can again see how they stack-up against fellow members.
Unfortunately the running on Strava is kept separate from the cycling, so any mileage on your bike does not count towards your weekly output for the purpose of the running clubs, which is understandable. If you have a varied diet of training on both then you can feel that you are missing on competing against everyone else by interchanging your disciplines, however if you're just using it to keep tabs on yourself and you know you'll never top-out the rankings then there's no harm in ensuring you're not propping up the foot of the rankings at the very least!
Taking my inspiration from all of the above I resolved to get out as often as I can this week on a mixed-bag of activities.
Monday saw me return home from work early for once, so I was able to get out and go for a cheeky 10k XC on my canal route as the sun hung low in the sky. Fully rested after the week of nothingness I was feeling good from the first step and when I finished the run, having dodged cows, horses and one of this year's Roe Deer fawns on the common, I had finished the route in the fastest time I have recorded in the 4 years I have run it!
On the Tuesday I cycled off to the leisure centre in the next town for a 500m swim before jumping on the bike for the ride home. This was the first time I have ventured in to the pool since the sprint triathlon and the combination of the swim with an immediate cycle it acts as a form of 'brick' training combining the changeover from one discipline to the other.
I was determined on Wednesday to get out on a run no matter how late after Kelv sussed-out of cycling again, so at 10pm with the wind starting to get up and the rain drizzling down I emerged from the house for a session of pavement-pounding, the first time I've been out running circuits of the block in the village for a long while as I try to minimise my pavement mileage.
Having missed on the ride the previous day, Thursday saw me out on the bike on my normal circuit, although this one had an enforced detour as the underpass was underwater through the amount of rain we have experienced of late.
All of these activities were undertaken on an empty stomach - I don't tend to eat whilst I'm working, only drink so I tend to get-by on tea (if offered) or sugar free energy drinks, which is less than ideal for getting out and exercising! and I keep-on being scalded by people for doing it this way, but the way I see it is if I can consistently burn off more than is put-in, then I may cease to be a fat bastard at some point in the future
Friday and Saturday saw days of rest and today with football called-off I had the chance to get out on a longer run. In the morning after a decent lie-in LSS and I took the dogs on a long walk down the canal following my 10km running route. After a spot of lunch and washing two filthy spaniels I managed to get myself together for a run as the sun began to set, retracing the first half of the dog walk from earlier before pushing-on over the abandoned side of the canal and then through the Newnham, to Rotherwick and home.
I wanted to have done some hill-reps in preparation for next weekend's marathon - which (from looking at a GPS tracking of someone who ran it last year) has a combined ascent of more than Ben Nevis over its length! But the lateness of the day meant I could do the near 12 mile route but without hill-reps before darkness would leave me stranded, so I opted for doing the miles rather than the reps. Even so, on the last section back in to the village from Rotherwick over the fields I found myself in near darkness!
This week is certainly a contrast to the previous, with managing activities on 5 days out of the 7, each of them weighing in around the hour or longer. I'm hoping to build on this for the future and do this every week, however I'm conscious about not over-doing it this week with the marathon coming along on Saturday… As such I will not run beyond Wednesday and will certainly not be doing anything on Friday as the evening will see the 3-4 hour drive down to the Gower peninsular in South Wales.
Having to confess to my fellow hamsters on Facebook on Sunday about not having managed anything, my paltry performance was brought in to perspective by Beth Risdon, author of the Shut Up and Run blog that I follow, who was in action in the Florida Iron Man race the previous day.
Beth had posted her race number on line and you could follow her progress through the Iron Man website, so all day from the off I was checking-in on a regular basis to see how she was faring. She has become an Iron Man (should that be Iron Woman?) from scratch in the space of a few months. She runs a great deal anyway so had a good level of fitness to start with and had completed triathlons and a half iron man in past years but doing an Ironman was not on her radar until she was approached to do one! You can read her account of her achievement on the blog with her entries for the run, the bike and the swim, and those waves getting in to the sea looked pretty damned gnarly!
Seeing Beth going about her way to finishing the Ironman was awesome, and a real motivator to get off my sorry arse and do something!.. And there was also another couple of motivators as well.
This week the organisers of the Brutal run series in whose events I have run have started a running club on Strava, which I use for tracking my cycling, with the intention of allowing those who run in their events to keep tabs on how they perform against others in training or running in general each week. At the same time, one of my clients in the village who is a keen XC runner with her dog and is getting involved in CaniX running also set-up a running club for the village so those who sign-up can again see how they stack-up against fellow members.
Unfortunately the running on Strava is kept separate from the cycling, so any mileage on your bike does not count towards your weekly output for the purpose of the running clubs, which is understandable. If you have a varied diet of training on both then you can feel that you are missing on competing against everyone else by interchanging your disciplines, however if you're just using it to keep tabs on yourself and you know you'll never top-out the rankings then there's no harm in ensuring you're not propping up the foot of the rankings at the very least!
Taking my inspiration from all of the above I resolved to get out as often as I can this week on a mixed-bag of activities.
Monday saw me return home from work early for once, so I was able to get out and go for a cheeky 10k XC on my canal route as the sun hung low in the sky. Fully rested after the week of nothingness I was feeling good from the first step and when I finished the run, having dodged cows, horses and one of this year's Roe Deer fawns on the common, I had finished the route in the fastest time I have recorded in the 4 years I have run it!
On the Tuesday I cycled off to the leisure centre in the next town for a 500m swim before jumping on the bike for the ride home. This was the first time I have ventured in to the pool since the sprint triathlon and the combination of the swim with an immediate cycle it acts as a form of 'brick' training combining the changeover from one discipline to the other.
I was determined on Wednesday to get out on a run no matter how late after Kelv sussed-out of cycling again, so at 10pm with the wind starting to get up and the rain drizzling down I emerged from the house for a session of pavement-pounding, the first time I've been out running circuits of the block in the village for a long while as I try to minimise my pavement mileage.
Having missed on the ride the previous day, Thursday saw me out on the bike on my normal circuit, although this one had an enforced detour as the underpass was underwater through the amount of rain we have experienced of late.
All of these activities were undertaken on an empty stomach - I don't tend to eat whilst I'm working, only drink so I tend to get-by on tea (if offered) or sugar free energy drinks, which is less than ideal for getting out and exercising! and I keep-on being scalded by people for doing it this way, but the way I see it is if I can consistently burn off more than is put-in, then I may cease to be a fat bastard at some point in the future
Friday and Saturday saw days of rest and today with football called-off I had the chance to get out on a longer run. In the morning after a decent lie-in LSS and I took the dogs on a long walk down the canal following my 10km running route. After a spot of lunch and washing two filthy spaniels I managed to get myself together for a run as the sun began to set, retracing the first half of the dog walk from earlier before pushing-on over the abandoned side of the canal and then through the Newnham, to Rotherwick and home.
I wanted to have done some hill-reps in preparation for next weekend's marathon - which (from looking at a GPS tracking of someone who ran it last year) has a combined ascent of more than Ben Nevis over its length! But the lateness of the day meant I could do the near 12 mile route but without hill-reps before darkness would leave me stranded, so I opted for doing the miles rather than the reps. Even so, on the last section back in to the village from Rotherwick over the fields I found myself in near darkness!
This week is certainly a contrast to the previous, with managing activities on 5 days out of the 7, each of them weighing in around the hour or longer. I'm hoping to build on this for the future and do this every week, however I'm conscious about not over-doing it this week with the marathon coming along on Saturday… As such I will not run beyond Wednesday and will certainly not be doing anything on Friday as the evening will see the 3-4 hour drive down to the Gower peninsular in South Wales.
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