Losing a Bike

Buried at the bottom of my last post is a personal challenge that I may well find tougher than cycling a hundred miles. I keep drooling over gorgeous lightweight titanium and carbon fibre bikes, but then weighing myself and thinking that my cheapest route to a 'lighter bike' is to make myself a lighter rider.

To that end my new challenge to myself is to lose weight equal to that of my bike. Then it will 'weigh nothing', which seems impressive.

Rounding only slightly, my unladen bike weighs 10Kg, which is 22Lb and one ounce. With 17 weeks to go to Christmas, I wonder if I can make it by then... or indeed ever. We'll see.

Preparing for a century: Week 9 of 16... and why I'll get to week 13 this year

Week 9!

A status report on my drive towards cycling 100 miles in a day. The eagle eyed amongst you wil realise that an awful lot more than 4 weeks have passed since my last posting (on week 5 of 16) and now.

I am cycling a lot more than I was. I'm doing 3-4 commutes to work each week, and usually a couple of them are hack home via the hilliest 14 mile ride locally available (over Farley Mount, to Kings Somborne, then over the ridge back to Braishfield and Romsey). I've also done a regular ride each Saturday or Sunday morning, cranking my way up to a 45-mile, brisk ride - out at around 7:30am, and back before 11.

...and so to week 13

So: raising the miles further is now in prospect, and I'm enlisting the tandem, and the company of Janice, and hardcore cycling heroes Hannah and Andy to spin out a couple of 'metric century' (100k) rides over the next couple of months, culminating the the fabulous 'Gridiron' audax event on 9th October. That will get me figuratively to 'week 13', but I am somewhat gutted to admit that the shortening daylight hours are going to put the ultimate goal of 100 miles out of sight this year.

Next Spring, I'll be back on the pursuit of this goal, and will be looking for a 150Km audax event (93 miles) that I can add 7 miles to.

A new goal

I now have a whole new 'Winter' goal... to lose weight equivalent to the weight of my bike.