A short history of my notable cycling.

From May 2008 to January 2012 I lived in Kennington in Ashford. I was cycling about 2 miles from home to Ashford International station, getting a train to Canterbury West station and cycling to my office about 0.9 miles from there. In short I was cycling about 6 miles a day/30 miles per week/120 miles per month.

At the end of January 2012 I moved to Willesborough in Ashford. After the snow and ice melted at the beginning of March this year I was cycling about 0.89 miles to Ashford international station, then the Canterbury bit, so now only cycling about 4 miles per day!

But it was in March 2012 that I made the change to cycling to Wye, boosting my cycle to about 11 miles per day and saving me £30 per month. I pushed and cycled 200 miles in March 2012, so I challenged myself to cycle 300 in April.

Today on 27th April 2012 I have achieved this!

The weak start in the first week is because I came down with several different cold-like things at the same time! But after that I fought rain, head-wind, herds of sheep (not fought, but, you know.. rang my bell at them a bit) and swore openly at horrible little men in BMWs.

So where do I go from here? The overall aim is to be able to cycle 58 miles in under 6 hours, but I still have 5 months to go until the London to Brighton event, and it has only taken me a month and a half to get where I am now. My first step will be to limit my train commute even further.. probably get the train from Wye to Chartham which means I’m cycling more at both ends, rather than increasing one stretch. This will save me another £19 per month!

Side note: at the beginning of this year I was deliberating as to whether or not I should join a gym, because my wife and I were quite attracted by the idea of going swimming regularly and it would have saved us money if we’d done it regularly enough. Truth be told, our schedules didn’t allow for it.. but by utilising my commute as a part of the day where I can exercise, it has not only got me fitter but saved me money; effectively paying me to exercise! By replacing 8 miles of my train journey (4 miles at each end) I will be saving at a rate of £600 per year. If I destroy my bike in the process, it’ll have paid for a new one already!

The challenge for May will be to cycle 400 miles. Given the last two weeks of April, this looks like it should be very achievable… hard work, but achievable.

The thing that started all this off, though, was a challenge that I agreed to take on for charity. I am cycling London to Brighton to raise money to help fight addiction through the charity Addaction, who run rehabilitation centres to help addicts break away from addictive substances, and work with corporations to limit the availability of addictive products such as strong ciders that tend to be sold cheaply. If you would like to help out you can donate to the Just Giving Page that my wife Kel and I are working from.

Ok; starting from the beginning.. because I have excluded any and all continuity between my cycling efforts and my blog…

I have a wife; my wife works for a charity and, due to a recent discovery that, despite a debilitating back injury, she is able to cycle, wants to take part in the London to Brighton cycle event that Addaction are supporting in September this year.

Now.. in the spirit of being a good husband, and a little bit of one-upmanship I was convinced to join her in the event.

Sidenote (if you didn’t click the link, “a charity”): Addaction are a charity that aim to help individuals and families break the cycle of addictions that blight the lives of  so many. They run rehabilitation centres for those addicted to drugs/alcohol and try to work with corporations to influence the availability of addictive substances.. for example, they recently managed to end/limit the production of notorious strong cider, “White Lightning”. Money raised by this cycle event will go to help families “Break the Cycle” (get it?) and if you would like to help Kel and I in raising money then you can do so via Kel’s Just Giving page.

Anyway.. I had a fairly abusive relationship with my bike already.. we had just moved house and Ashford International Station was about a 5 minute cycle away. This was not very becoming of a training regime that will get me fit for a 50-60 mile cycle!! So here’s what I changed.

First of all I stopped cycling to Ashford International and started cycling to Wye station.. this means I’m going through about 4.6 miles per direction, and through my season ticket I’m saving about £30 per month!! Brilliant!

So using these new found riches I bought myself a new bike seat, because mine had fallen to bits! This cost me just £4.99 (+p&p), which is great for a not-so-experienced bike customer! It means that if it doesn’t work out well for me then I can afford to try something else! So far it has been ok.

Also got myself some Bar Ends for my handlebars, so that I can sit in more comfortable positions over longer distances, and hoik myself up higher to get more power going up hills. This was the end result…

Frick-Yeah!

Anyway.. in the interest of safety I also bought a ^{(the cheapest)} helmet ^{(I could find)}… Which turned out to also look frickin’ awesome!

By now it’s mid march and I realise that I’m clocking up a really frustrating 100+ number of miles, and want to round it up to an even 200. This was quite hard work given that I’m quite a lazy person, but I pushed on and managed it. Evidence here:

In my defence I’ve been gradually learning to use Endomondo.. I know now that I could have just unselected the other sports and made it look a bit neater, but hey, have done some running and walking too; aren’t I just the dreamiest?

So I achieved my 200 miles for March.. I decided to set a target of 300 miles for April. This would have been a clever idea if it weren’t for all the damn April showers we’ve been having..

On April 2nd I managed to catch the mother of all colds, which lasted about 8 days.. it left my total quite bare. Thankfully I’ve recouped and I have quite a good plan to finish the 300 miles. In May I hope to cycle 400 miles, and will progress my target setting more realistically from there.

So far my fluctuating weight has dropped a couple of Kg; I’ve gone from a 38″ waist to a 34″ waist, and I’ve raised my game to about 90 minutes of continuous exercise per journey..

Today the trains were being “a right bastard” (thank you, Southeastern!). I had already cycled 8 miles as I packed up at work early and headed out for some exercise in the sun; I continued on to Chilham, bringing me up to 15 miles.. then I got stuck in Chilham waiting for 2 trains that never came, while the rain bucketed it down! By the time the rain had subsided I decided it was going to take just as long to cycle home as it would to wait for the train to actually arrive, resulting in another 9 miles home.

This is good going, but unfortunately it resulted in me being too tired to compete at the Singleton Barn Open Mic, but that’s really no big tragedy.

To date the furthest I’ve tracked in 1 day is 31 miles, which means that I’m just over half way training for the London to Brighton.. I hope to make some interesting discoveries about cycling, about Kent and about myself between now and the big day. Wish me luck, and please give to the cause wherever you can!

I have been suffering from a cold, but I think today I showed it who is boss!!

On tracking apps: I tried Endomondo, as it came pre-installed on my phone, but wasn’t pleased with how it seems to absolutely love facebook, and has very little willingness to share with Twitter.

I had been using MapMyRun.com before I got the phone, so I tried their app. All was ok until I started having GPS trouble. The signal problem wasn’t a fault with the software at all, but when I brought it up on Twitter I received a lot of advice on which apps to go for.. after a lot of experimenting, I’ve decided Endomondo does work best for me! I still don’t like it’s creepy, touchy feely relationship with facebook, but I can ignore it.

What I like best about it is the target setting feature on the android app. On Wednesday I made myself run but burnt out after about 4 miles because I had no water with me, it was my first run since January and this premature spring sunshine took its tole on me.

Today I set a challenge to do 5 miles, which takes from my office, to Fordwich and back. Rather happy with the results:

The only thing I’m a little disappointed with is that in going back to Endomondo and using their services a bit more thoroughly, I’ve learnt what The Cooper Test is, and it turns out I’m still sitting in the Bad bracket (for a 20-29 year old male). But I can keep on setting targets.. and perhaps one day I’ll challenge myself to raise my Cooper score.

For now I’m going to continue trying to get down to 80-82kg or lower, and finally lose this belly!