Get on yer Bike!
Lands end to John O'Groats on a bike it is then. LEJOG. On a bike. Not one of them new fangled e-bikes which carry copious amounts of electrons in lithium buckets strapped to an electric motor. No, a proper bike.
It's now 5 years since I bought my Koga touring bike. Costing over 3 grand, it was as traumatic as donating a kidney or having an arm chopped off. I did not pay for a super light super bike with skinny tires. No I had seen that Koga bikes had been used by Mark Baumont for his round the world cycling challenges and because, when I looked into it, they resembled svelte versions of 5 bar gates with tractor tyres built for middle aged touring. I.e. strong. It was the right bike for me and likely to transport me, a rather overweight middle aged man, on jaunts and forays around the UK and any other place I had a mind to go.
In the same timescale I had been planning / preparing financial options in case I had the opportunity to stop working @ the age of 55 and to do the other things in life that were not work shaped nor flavoured. BT was looking to release folk on early leaver packages so I took it last year.
As I have written before everything came to a head last year. Off work sick with stress and anxiety for 2 months just before leaving. Having being diagnosed as a type 2 diabetic some 2 years or so earlier with high blood pressure, everything was going far south in terms of lifestyle and health and this particular fat man was about to undertake a a different type and potentially fatal journey without a significant change to his life.
So here I am, retired early with a nice bike and time to think of the other things. I had thought often about doing some long range cycle rides before but as usual I let the other other things take precedence. Nonetheless a couple of holidays ago we (me, Kathryn and her squeaky earthling, Julia) started to do cycle rides in Europe. For example, along the Danube, around rather large lakes etc. Notionally about 200 miles over 5 to 6 days and I found out some things about me / it.
1. I really enjoyed it. Perhaps the continental weather helped but with few days of rain and on relatively flat cycle routes any concern at doing any distance on a bike simply evaporated.
2. It gets better as you go. Perhaps a few days saddle sore and initially with 'empty' legs at the end of the day I was amazed at how the body deals with daily riding. Normally by day 4 all problems with sore legs and bits had disappeared. In fact on a couple of occasions the legs really felt good at the end of a ride so much so that it would have been no problem to carry on.
3. Everyone's doing it. The cycle paths (of which there are many in Germany and Austria) are loaded with retired folk and young families on cycling holidays. There's nothing quite like it in the UK.
So its time to get on my bike and as I said in my leaving email, one of the targets was to do LEJOG. Simply thats 1200 miles (I'm biking back from JOG to Inverness for the train) and @40,000ft of ascent. LEJOG is for sure not an easy ride and is much further than you think. For example if I did the same distance travelling south east from York and crossing the channel at Dover then 1200 miles takes you through Vienna to the Austrian border with Slovakia or Hungary. With less than half of the overall ascent. LEJOG is likely to be a tough ride. Nonetheless the training has started. Here is an opening vid of a fat man on a fat bike using magnetic training techniques at home until the weather improves.
As you can see I am no racing snake. I expect to take circa 21 days to do the journey. This is still @50 miles per day and @1500ft of ascent. Day in and day out. If I can do it quicker I will. If not I do have options to flex the pace as I go but I will complete it. The dream; the idea is should all go well and I find that I am enjoying it and considering I am now a retired type, I'll forgo picking the train up in Inverness and cycle all the way home to York. That would be 1600 miles from start to finish. Wow!
So this is the challenge for this year. Diabetic? Overweight? Blood pressure? I will take care as I go but it is important to me to do it. Hopefully in the process you will help me raise a few shekel for Cancer Research UK and the RNLI, both are very important to me. I will also do other interesting things. I'll track body weight and other measurements to see for example, does my waist reduce, will my legs grow (muscle not length), how many calories will I consume, what will I eat and drink, how much of it, etc. But also to record the feelings and experience as I go as well as keeping a video log on YouTube.
Regarding the latter, a great thank you to Drift Innovation. I use their bullet cameras but had lost the remote control. Pretty important to operate the helmet mounted camera from the handlebars. Simply I could not find any replacement remotes as my camera is now old hat but after a rummage around in the office Barney at Drift Innovation found a spare and sent it to me free / gratis. Huge thanks! I will make a donation to the charities as a thank you to them.
A long blog entry to start with for sure. I will update it as I prepare, perhaps practice sharing some video stuff, all to help me get off to a good start on the 14th May 2018.
Speak soon.
It's now 5 years since I bought my Koga touring bike. Costing over 3 grand, it was as traumatic as donating a kidney or having an arm chopped off. I did not pay for a super light super bike with skinny tires. No I had seen that Koga bikes had been used by Mark Baumont for his round the world cycling challenges and because, when I looked into it, they resembled svelte versions of 5 bar gates with tractor tyres built for middle aged touring. I.e. strong. It was the right bike for me and likely to transport me, a rather overweight middle aged man, on jaunts and forays around the UK and any other place I had a mind to go.
In the same timescale I had been planning / preparing financial options in case I had the opportunity to stop working @ the age of 55 and to do the other things in life that were not work shaped nor flavoured. BT was looking to release folk on early leaver packages so I took it last year.
As I have written before everything came to a head last year. Off work sick with stress and anxiety for 2 months just before leaving. Having being diagnosed as a type 2 diabetic some 2 years or so earlier with high blood pressure, everything was going far south in terms of lifestyle and health and this particular fat man was about to undertake a a different type and potentially fatal journey without a significant change to his life.
So here I am, retired early with a nice bike and time to think of the other things. I had thought often about doing some long range cycle rides before but as usual I let the other other things take precedence. Nonetheless a couple of holidays ago we (me, Kathryn and her squeaky earthling, Julia) started to do cycle rides in Europe. For example, along the Danube, around rather large lakes etc. Notionally about 200 miles over 5 to 6 days and I found out some things about me / it.
1. I really enjoyed it. Perhaps the continental weather helped but with few days of rain and on relatively flat cycle routes any concern at doing any distance on a bike simply evaporated.
2. It gets better as you go. Perhaps a few days saddle sore and initially with 'empty' legs at the end of the day I was amazed at how the body deals with daily riding. Normally by day 4 all problems with sore legs and bits had disappeared. In fact on a couple of occasions the legs really felt good at the end of a ride so much so that it would have been no problem to carry on.
3. Everyone's doing it. The cycle paths (of which there are many in Germany and Austria) are loaded with retired folk and young families on cycling holidays. There's nothing quite like it in the UK.
So its time to get on my bike and as I said in my leaving email, one of the targets was to do LEJOG. Simply thats 1200 miles (I'm biking back from JOG to Inverness for the train) and @40,000ft of ascent. LEJOG is for sure not an easy ride and is much further than you think. For example if I did the same distance travelling south east from York and crossing the channel at Dover then 1200 miles takes you through Vienna to the Austrian border with Slovakia or Hungary. With less than half of the overall ascent. LEJOG is likely to be a tough ride. Nonetheless the training has started. Here is an opening vid of a fat man on a fat bike using magnetic training techniques at home until the weather improves.
As you can see I am no racing snake. I expect to take circa 21 days to do the journey. This is still @50 miles per day and @1500ft of ascent. Day in and day out. If I can do it quicker I will. If not I do have options to flex the pace as I go but I will complete it. The dream; the idea is should all go well and I find that I am enjoying it and considering I am now a retired type, I'll forgo picking the train up in Inverness and cycle all the way home to York. That would be 1600 miles from start to finish. Wow!
So this is the challenge for this year. Diabetic? Overweight? Blood pressure? I will take care as I go but it is important to me to do it. Hopefully in the process you will help me raise a few shekel for Cancer Research UK and the RNLI, both are very important to me. I will also do other interesting things. I'll track body weight and other measurements to see for example, does my waist reduce, will my legs grow (muscle not length), how many calories will I consume, what will I eat and drink, how much of it, etc. But also to record the feelings and experience as I go as well as keeping a video log on YouTube.
Regarding the latter, a great thank you to Drift Innovation. I use their bullet cameras but had lost the remote control. Pretty important to operate the helmet mounted camera from the handlebars. Simply I could not find any replacement remotes as my camera is now old hat but after a rummage around in the office Barney at Drift Innovation found a spare and sent it to me free / gratis. Huge thanks! I will make a donation to the charities as a thank you to them.
A long blog entry to start with for sure. I will update it as I prepare, perhaps practice sharing some video stuff, all to help me get off to a good start on the 14th May 2018.
Speak soon.
Comments
Post a Comment
I would be very interested in reading your thoughts about my blog entries. Please feel free to comment. But do leave your name so I know who I’m replying to 😊