And May has arrived...!

Finally I'm back home.

The last two weeks were really hectic. A couple of days in Northallerton which was followed by a full five days in Southend-on-Sea disrupted my training schedule severely.

I tried to use every opportunity last week - from walking to the venue to a couple of runs in the morning and using the stairs instead of the lift in the hotel - but overall the progress was miserable.


The picture below is one I took last week of the dedicated cycle lane running past the Civic Centre in Southend-on-Sea.

Well, I'm back home now and we are planning a bike ride this morning after a stint in town. I went with the girls' group to Ness Gardens in the Wirral and thought that it was a great ride to do. So after town, we will go off and cycle the route up to Ness.

Have a lovely bankholiday Monday!

Cycling coaching

I've been debating for a while whether to get a coach/Personal trainer or not. Well, reality has set in and I'm not as flush as I thought I am. I still need to save for the upcoming bike ride - meals and so on - so I'm taking it the easy way.

I ordered a few books...Oh dear, I can hear you say...and will be trying this on my own. Well, it is a journey, isn't it?

Without taking anything away from any other good books there might be out there, I thought I will share with you what I found. I ordered four:

1. Weight Training for cyclists by Ken Doyle and Eric Schmitz
2. The Long distance cyclists' handbook (second edition) by Simon Doughty
3. The time-crunched cyclits - Fit, fast and Powerful in six hours a week by Chris Carmichael and Jim Rutberg
4. Bicycling magazine's Training Techniques for cyclists edited by Ben Hewitt

I found all of them useful in some sort of way, particularly the first two and have now devised a training programme consisting of weight training and distance cycling for the next 9.5 weeks till the Big Ride.

I'm happy to share it and will be posting it here if I can work out how to paste an excel spreadsheet so that it still looks the part!! I will try and scan it as a picture, hopefully that will work.

The programme is an ideal so I will strive to get this done as it is set down but if I can't make it on a day due to work commitments I'm not going to sulk about it, but try to catch up later.

I have set up power, strength and core weight training programmes from the first book which complements the actual cycling done in a week, again happy to share those individual programmes if you want.

Ok!! Here we go above, it seems to have worked. Now to get the cycling going...

How much can you do on your own?

My exercise yesterday was my lunchtime spinning class, taken by a really good PT instructor who I've known for several years. I guess he is about as old as I am or maybe even older. Why I'm mentioning this is to indirectly say that he isn't one of these youngsters that you get at the gyms. Don't take me wrong, I have nothing against the young ones but I have a bit more respect for someone who is older than the average trainer but is still a very good PT instructor and who is keeping his body in tip-top shape.

We all know that as you get older your body slows down, even for men and it takes more and more to get and keep those flabby bits off.


I had this brilliant idea whilst I was spinning away during the session to ask him about PT sessions, so after the class I plucked up courage and went over where he was packing his stuff away. To say that I was shocked was putting it mildly! The sessions starts at £30 per session and if you buy bulk (7 sessions) then it is £10 off. I have to admit I don't know anything about PT sessions so maybe this is the going rate but I didn't know it was that much. I politely took his number and said I will get back to him. He said that a session isn't just an hour. It is more like 2 or 3 hours so it might be worth it.

Back in the cloakroom I started pondering about this and finally decided that it might be a very good idea but only if we can do it my way. What I have in mind is 7 sessions, one per week which enables me to build onto the base that he is setting during the PT session and that would also not be so hard on my purse. My time also doesn't allow me to have more than one session per week. I haven't yet spoken to him but will present this idea soon and see what he says...

I know that £200 is quite expensive but hey, there is only so much you can do on your own. I have now been training since 1 February and I'm still not riding the bike as quick and easy as I would like, thinking that I'm not probably in my 7th week of training? Remember my earlier post on the LL diet that I couldn't do due to the rigid way they structure it? I was then thinking that all the money saved (£66 per week) could buy some PT sessions!

My cautious nature has however kicked in and I'm already thinking maybe I should only buy one session as a taster and see if I like it before splashing out on 7 sessions and depart with £200. What if I don't like it or think it is not for me? Maybe I can ask him for a taster session, maybe at a reduced rate? I don't want to come across as too cautious though. Remember I will be at his mercy when I'm exercising and he will definitely stretch me far!

I will give him a ring tomorrow (too busy today; on the train to London and his number is at home anyway) and speak to him, setting out what I want...be firm!

Hopefully I can step my training up a gear. I'm sure coming 12 June I will not regret the efforts I've made to get fit.