So, you are wondering why I have suddenly posted a blog after many years of silence and are also wondering why I have started with a YouTube video of the Barden Bellas. You are probably wondering why I have posted such a vidoe on a cycling blog and what has it got to do with cycling?
Now, I am wondering where I am going with the blog….
Well in 2019, I only cycled 1900 miles. By far my worst total in the last 10 years
It gets even worse when you look at the monthly breakdown for 2019
You will notice that I didn’t cycle at all in December and in some months didn’t reach 100 miles. That is truly pathetic. My excuse was I had an accident in January and tore the tendon in my shoulder and it restricted my movement in my arm. The reality is I lost my mojo and became lazy.
The accident did not involve a car, but involved a cyclist falling off in front of me and me going over him. I was in a segregated cycle land and going relatively slowly when cyclist overtook me, unclipped accidentally and lost his balance.
That accident became my excuse to be lazy and not ride as much as I should. I didn’t ride the 2019 UK Police Unity Tour and instead drove a support vehicle. Partly because they were short of support drivers, and partly because I was in a state of apathy.
Of course, not cycling and being lazy resulted in me putting lots of weight on. By the end of 2019, I was getting mistaken for the Michelin Man. I had to do something about it. The images below were taken Christmas 2019. The first one on 25 December 2019 and the second on 27 December 2019.
I was my heaviest in at least 17 years. I resolved to do something about it, so on 1st January 2020, I weighed myself and resolved to lose weight. January 1st 202, I weighed myself ( probably needed a weighbridge) and I weighed 276 lbs or 19 stone 10 lbs. For someone who is only 5’10” tall, I resembled an unfit hippopotamus. I signed up to the MyFitnessPal App to track my food intake and resolved to try to exercise more.
At around this time, I saw an advert for a fitness/ diet group to be run by Leyton Orient called Fit O’s. The group was to be for males 35-65 who wanted to lose weight. It was being run by the Leyton Orient Community Trust. I thought, nothing ventured nothing gained, so applied for it and was luck to be one of the 30 or so Orient supporters to be offered a place. I had no idea what to expect.
The first meeting explained a bit more, it was a 12 week course where we met on a Wednesday night for 2 hours, one hour being gentle exercise and one hour being classroom based learning re diet/ health etc. The first week, we were weighed, measured etc and did a gentle walk around the Orient Ground. The aim being to get people being more active. Some of the group had underlying health problems, others like me were just greedy and lazy.
The group seemed good. Most of us needed to lose weight and did not do enough exercise. After the first week of walking, subsequent weeks involved, playing handball, basketball, football, badminton etc. I was not able to take part in all the exercises because of underlying knee problem following a cycling accident in 2009. I was encouraged to do what I could and at least take part in the warm up exercises. The group was very inclusive.
Going to the group also encouraged me to get cycling more. You can see that in February I did more cycling than in January. I was cycling to work more often, then Corona Virus hit….
Since the 16th March I have been forced to work from home. I live alone, so I made an effort to get out on my bike most days for exercise, and when not cycling, I went for a walk. This was my way of keeping my sanity and seeing life existed outside of the four walls of my prison cell house. Working from home was not something I wanted and would not have been my choice. However, I took it as an opportunity. You will notice that in March 2020 the distance I cycled rocketed from 300 miles in February to 900 miles in January.
Working at home gave me a chance to make work fit around my life choices. Since March I have averaged over 1000 miles per month. That is 33 or so miles every day. This has been done on a variety of bikes, from touring bikes, road bikes, fixed wheel bikes and most shockingly on a mountain bikes
I have recorded what I have eaten everyday this year, and all my exercise. MyFitnessPal is a great app that makes it easy to record food intake, You can use the bar codes on food to add it to your record. This has helped me track my food intake. I have not cut any foods out and am simply reducing/ monitoring my food intake rather than banning any foods. Alcohol is not off limits either, which is just as well as the half bottle of vodka tonight demonstrates ( and explains all the typos in this).
The chart below shows the weight has steadily come off, although as you will notice there are blips along the way, as tomorrow will demonstrate after a vodka and kebab social with my neighbour tonight.
So, to try to bring this story to a conclusion, rather than it be a Ronnie Corbett tale. By 18 July 2020, I have cycled more miles than in any year since 2011, apart from 2017, but I expect to over take that by the end of August.
I have lost as at today’s date, 5 stones 7 lbs ( 77lbs). I am wearing jeans that are 10″ smaller than I was wearing at the start of the year. I had to go to court last week ( I am a lawyer, not the defendant). I found I had nothing to wear that fitted me! I also had to buy some new underwear recently and went to Tesco and found that for the first time since I went to University that I could fit into medium sized clothing!
Even more amazing, I went to visit my father in Durham 10 days ago on his 82nd birthday and he offered me his cycling kit as he hasn’t ridden for a few years. Amazingly, the kit he wore when he was the Veteran’s World & National Champion fitted me. That was a very proud moment for me. I never dreamed I would ever be thin enough to wear his old kit or to ride his ultra light racing bikes.
The image below was me a week ago.
You will perhaps now understand the video clip at the start of this blog post. I’ve got a new life, you’d hardly recognise me!
Lockdown has been a fantastic opportunity for me to exercise more and to drink less and get myself fitter.
So, where do I go from here? Well, I am hoping to ride the Trans Pennine Trail on my mountain bike next month, lockdown restrictions permitting and perhaps in 2021 to ride LEJoG again.
A year ago, none of this was possible. So, what has changed? Well, I have been determined to do something about my health, and also, I have been lucky to have has the Fit O’s group come along at the right time, and then as the Fit o’s was coming to an end, the Newcastle football lads i have known for years decided to have a 12 week sponsored weight loss competition called Nee More Eating, being a play on the name of the group in the early 1980s, the infamous Newcastle Mainline Express (NME). A great group of lads who I have the pleasure of calling friends, as well as in many cases previous clients. Lads who have put their desire to lose weight to a good use to raise funds for the NHS charities. Why not donate a few £££s to the cause to recognise their efforts.
So, nearly 7 months into 2020, 4 months of lockdown and no football, and I am 77 lbs lighter than at the start of the year, but have expanded my bike stable to 7 bikes now ( I am a devotee of the N+1 philosophy as dictated by Rule 12 from the Velominarti!)
I am still a fat bloke on a bike cycling round slowly, but am now merely overweight ( according to my BMI) as opposed to being morbidly obese or even just obese. I am at a weight I have not been since before I was married some 27+ years ago.
Where do I go from here? Well bed now and out on my bike in the morning.
PS, I might as well admit as you will have no doubt gathered from the video that another obsession from the lockdown has been TikTok, hence the Youtube clip