This morning, as I look out of the window I can see a clear blue sky for the first time in a couple of weeks. There is a penalty to pay though, it is freezing hard and looks set to continue all day. Due to the recent snow I have not been out as often as I would have liked and for the first time since I retired I have been bored with having nothing to do. I cant even potter in the garage because of the cold and you can only watch so much TV. I have managed a couple of short rides out and also a stroll around the sea front. This, together with my daily shopping trips have stopped me from stagnating completely but I cant wait for the weather to break so I can get back to normal.
I started this blog 1 year ago and at that time I set myself four challenges.
No 1 was to cycle the C2C, starting at St Bees but finishing at Whitby. This was achieved late in May and I enjoyed every single mile of it. No 2 I hoped to climb at least one big mountain. Unfortunately for one reason or another I failed to do this. However, in my defence I have climbed about 166.855 ft on the bike. If my maths are correct I think that is somewhere in the order of 31 1/2 miles so I don't feel too disappointed. No 3 was to reduce my weight to under 13 stone ! Well, I failed to do this too. I seem to hover around the 13st 7lb mark and to be honest, I feel quite comfortable with that so what the hell....... No 4 My target mileage for the year was 2000 miles, I know that is not a great deal by some standards but to me it was a lot more than I have done for 40 years or so. I was chuffed to bits when I stormed past the 2000 mark back in September so I immediately raised it by another 1000. unfortunately I am going to fall short by about 350 miles which is a little disappointing but is better than I expected 12 months ago. One thing that I have noticed is that I have not had many rides over 25 miles or so which means that much of my cycling is over the same roads time and again with very little in the way of variations, perhaps next year I will try to go a little further afield from time to time. All in all I am satisfied with what I have achieved over the year and look forward to new challenges in 2013. At the moment about the only challenge is to ride 100 miles in a day and John and I are already talking about it. another possibility is to enter some kind of sponsored event, possibly the Great North Ride, but that will be decided later. My target for the year was origionaly 2000 miles. This I managed to achieve by late September, I then increased it to 3000 miles. As it turned out, this was a little ambitious as I fell short by 360.9 miles. Target 3000.0 miles Achieved 2639.1 .. Shortfall 360.9 .. |
AuthorJust an old fart but young at heart Archives
June 2015
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