Progress Log, Week 2. Shut up and ride.

In true New Year Resolution style, I've been determined to keep to the 'lose weight, gain fitness' plan and so far it is going quite well. Here are the stats for this week:

15/01/2013
12hr 08min cycling
175.1 miles
My weight: 185.6lb
Weekly weight loss/gain: -2.5lb
24.7 lb to go. My weight goal is 160.9lb

I didn't say too much about it last week, mainly because it was so painful. It's hard to relay the misery of hauling your excess weight up a steep hill, into a relentless northerly wind, using gears that feel as if they should belong on Bradley Wiggins's time-trial bike, Garmin blinking out a doleful 14.2 mph average, unless you've experienced it, but there really is no substitute for just getting on the bike and putting the miles in. There are many good excuses for not going out:

1. The weather. January in Essex is usually cold and miserable and this year is no exception. The upside is that no two days are the same, so one day you might be riding in freezing fog, the next fighting a biting Arctic wind and the one after grovelling through driving sleet, so at least there is plenty of variety. If you get out a lot, you have a good chance of collecting all the adverse weather conditions and filling up your sticker book that way.
2. Cold feet. It must be my advancing age or something, but after an hour or so of riding in 0-5 degrees C my feet start to go numb. Despite some nice Gore overshoes, the numbness starts at the toes and makes me feel like a bilateral foot amputee by the time I've covered thirty miles. Somebody somewhere must make some heated insoles and if they do, I'm getting some!



Gt Tey to Aldham road. 3 months after resurfacing!

3. The roads. Essex has some excellent minor roads that are generally light on traffic, but are in a pretty awful state of repair. The photo on the right shows a typical road surface that has been maintained by the 'papering over the cracks' technique so beloved of Essex County Council in these cash-straitened times. I observed the road works on this road in action not three months ago and it involved a large contraption resembling something from a Miyazaki cartoon, spanning the width of the road, spraying liquid tar over the existing road surface that may or may not have had potholes filled earlier by some sort of tarmac-firing 'shotgun', while simultaneously sprinkling a thick layer of granite chips over the wet tar. The tar cools and the chips set, helped by passing vehicles pressing the chips down. The manpower costs must be quite low: two chaps operating the road surfacer, with another bored-looking individual further down the road sitting in a van. I'm not sure what he does, but it must be important.
   The only downside of this technique is that it, well, just doesn't work, leaving enraged motorists with smashed windscreens from flying stone chips and traumatised cyclists with numb hands from the vibration of the road surface, broken wheels from crashing into new potholes where the old ones were and broken bones from falling off after getting stuck in the seams from the previous road repairs. It's becoming so bad that Essex could really host it's own Paris-Roubaix type race, say the 'Coggeshall to Nayland'. Thing is, I'm sure that if veteran hard men Eddy Merckx and Roger de Vlaeminck were brought over to promote it, they'd quickly collapse by the verge and cry like babies. Suffice to say, the roads do beat you up a bit!

Nevertheless, I'm pleased to say that I've more than doubled my goal of six hours cycling last week. Apart for the weight loss/fitness drive, the Strava Cycling Base Mile Blast has proved to be a good incentive to get out on the bike. I covered 175 miles last week, more than I rode in any one week last year, bringing my total for January up to 316 miles. I was surprised at how I've recovered day-on-day, avoiding any injuries by keeping the pace steady and I expect to be able to pick the speed up later in the year. Freezing road conditions are definitely hazardous, but I've found that when the roads are icy, my mountain bike, with its 2.25 in tyres pumped up to 'squishy' copes well with the conditions and keeps me upright when my road bike with its 25 mm contact patches would be on the deck. The weather started to get really cold today, mind, so I'm going to need to keep the motivation going, but it's good to start to see progress so soon into the process.