Progress so far...

June 30th 2009 - 22 stone 4Ibs. Current weight - 17 stone 1Ib. Weight loss - 5 stone 3Ibs. Commuting miles - 3389.
Non commuting miles - 359. Mileage this week - 101 miles. Total mileage - 3748 miles.


Friday 18 June 2010

The spirit was willing...

But oh my God was the flesh weak! A continuous 5 days of MTBing has really taken its toll on my fat 46 year old legs, they're knackered!

My intent this morning was to do a good explore of the bridleways around Belbroughton and Hagley but the minute I was pedalling up the Waseley's I just knew that it wasn't going to happen.

I got as far as the Hollybush Pub on the Stourbridge Road and decided that I would endure the climb up and over Walton Hill to short cut the ride home. Thankfully I had a puncture about then too so I could rest my legs while I fixed it!

The climb was a nightmare, add on to the fact it was pretty overcast and humid and I was glad when I was thundering down the singletrack down towards to Romsley.

I have used my Muvi clone for the first time on that bit of the ride so please enjoy the film. Take no notice of the date/time stamp as the instructions are not clear on how to alter it to the correct settings. It's in a Chinese version of English, it may as well be written in Welsh! As is usual I'm finding, the footage doesn't show the speed or the gradient on the hilly bits, please believe me when I say I was going extremely quickly on the downhill!

For those interested the backing track is The Pretender by The Foo Fighters. I could bore you with how they got their name and what Foo Fighters means, but I won't!







On the way over Romsley Hill I saw wifey taking our daughter to the school bus and got a cheery wave, which boosted morale a tad, enough to get me home for a nice hot coffee and a shower.

Stats here:

Started: 18 Jun 2010 06:39:26
Ride Time: 1:23:58
Stopped Time: 0:00
Distance: 9.07 miles
Average: 6.48 miles/hr
Fastest Speed: 30.02 miles/hr
Climb: 528 feet
Calories: 412

Route here:

http://maps.google.com/?q=http://share.abvio.com/d1c4/1bb6/4b96/d37e/Cyclemeter-Cycle-20100618-0639.kml



The plan was then to take Dan (aka Spawn of Satan) to Bidford on Avon for a river bank stroll and to chuck him over the swing park there. Mission accomplished, he's now sleeping the sleep of the just which should tide him over enough for our weekly Friday afternoon trip to the Dodford Inn.

This was my last pedal of the week until I start back commuting on my road bike on Monday. As for Phill's challenge I have successfully completed 108 off road miles, which was my aim, so target hit! There is 1 more off road trip I can get in and that promises to be an epic 40 plus miler around the canals and NCR5 with my mukka Ski next Saturday. Naturally a full report, videos and photos will be published as soon as humanly possible!

As for the weight challenge of losing 5 stones by the end of June, I'm not going to publish weekly weight stats until then. A silly superstition is all!

6 comments:

  1. Congrats on getting the 100 up so soon mate! Brilliant stuff. I'm hoping to get there next Tuesday.

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  2. Cheers Phill, the last couple of days were a bit of an effort truth be told!

    I'm sure you'll do it with ease, don't stop past a 100 though, you've got some momentum building now! Keep on keeping on!

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  3. The shots from the camera are looking great. I'm impressed at just how steady it is.

    I tried my 'ebay special' on my helmet and all I got was shots of the ground or sky and loads and loads of camera shake everytime the ground got bumpy.

    btw: Have you seem the new features in Google earth (5.2?), It allows you to take your gps plots and create a fly-by movie.
    http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2010/06/google_earth_52_released.html

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  4. The benefits of full suspension mate, I'm not surprised the camera was shaking on your rigid single!

    I'll check out the Google Earth thing, thanks for the heads up!

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  5. Your legs might have felt knackered, but you still did 9 miles! Many people (and I include myself) would need to be on top form to do that! Congrats on completing the 100 challenge!

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  6. Thanks Christie, looking forward to a weekend's rest now!

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