Getting back on the bike

I guess this story starts almost two years ago.

After riding a bike all over the world in my teens and twenties, racing, touring and generally adventuring, from the Andes to Australia and many places in between, once the kids came along and I found myself working long hours in London, cycling stopped.

Over the years, despite visits to the gym, a reasonable diet, some running and the best efforts of my personal trainer, I just got fatter and fatter until I top out at 138 kgs. Part of the explanation for this manifested itself in April 2015 when I was diagnosed with a pituary gland tumour. This 37mm x 23mm prolactinoma was not cancerous but had been messing with my hormones for years.

So that was one trigger for wanting to get fit again. There were 3 other triggers.

In Autumn 2015, inspired by one of my best friends, I bought a Fat Bike and started mountain biking. Nothing too serious but once a week we would head to the hills for a fairly modest ride. Forest trails or single track, in the Welsh Borders, Cannock Chase or up in the Peak.

Another inspiration was another friend of mine who basically could not stop laughing when I confessed that I had done the Birmingham Half Marathon three times over the last four years but my best times was only 3 hours and 4 minutes. Now this was someone I really admired so it was a massive kick up the backside!

The other trigger was time. I decided to work less and let my team get on with running the business.

So I bought a road bike last Autumn and started mixing the off road with a few road miles. I spent a week in Andulucia road biking with Ashley from Andalusian Cycle Experience. I could only manage about 60kms but my weight was coming down and had got to about 118 kgs.

My target over the winter 2016/2017 was the 2017 World Fat Bike Championships in Crested Butte, Colorado. I had taken part in this in 2016 and was almost the comedy Brit entrant: overweight and over there, I certainly wasn’t fit enough to compete and once you factored in the 9000ft altitude, I could barely breathe never mind ride a bike.

I started training, riding my bike 3 or 4 times a week; often at Cannock on the Fat Bike or on the road bike riding the lanes between Birmingham and Stratford. Over Christmas I did Rapha’s Festive 500 (500 kms on the 8 days between Christmas and New Years Eve) and carried on into the New Year

By early January my weight was down to about 105 kgs and left for a weeks cycling in Boulder, Colorado en route to Crested Butte: I wanted some altitude training and I figured a week in Boulder at 5400ft would help me out.

It didn’t!

But I did come back inspired and decided to think about a Summer of Pain.

Well things did not go according to plan!

We rose early; unfeasibly early. Like 6am. We picked up Rachel and Dawn in the van just as the heavy rain started. By the time we signed on, the day had morphed into the worst of the year. Cold, windy and wet, despite the 1000 plus riders, there were still more puddles than cyclists.

After only a few miles, two friends we met at the start decided to retired.

The conditions were horrendous. It was the cold rather than the wet but the combination was fairly devastating.

We did 18 kms before abandoning. To add insult to injury Will had a puncture on the way back to the start.

Then soon after we arrived back in Moseley, the sky started to clear, the rain stopped and the weather picked up. It was not a bad afternoon.

Time for the turbo trainer.