First full week of the year and I'm knackered already!!

Well this is going to be harder than I thought!! By Thursday I’d only managed one hour on the bike and I’d been planning to do ten hours for the week! Managed to ride Thursday, Saturday and Sunday and dragged it up to 9 hours, 59 minutes and 44 seconds ..... I’m giving myself the extra 16 seconds!!

A great road spin on Thursday, a hill interval session offroad on Saturday and a 4 hour 15 minute Epic Savage spin today in Djouce ..... I’m completely f..ked! Really not used to riding two days in a row!

My weight is down by a kilo or at least it was on Friday morning but I’ve eaten enough for a small army since I got in today so .....!

January 1st Weigh-In!

Well I braved the scales this morning for the 1st time in a while and I've put on 4lbs (nearly 2 kgs!) since the start of December. I suppose given all the snow and the Christmas festivities it could have been worse!
So I'm 88kgs and need to get to 86kgs by the end of January!

January Targets

As anyone who cycles with me regularly will confirm my mountain bike technical progress has been slow (painfully slow!) and while I'm confident that I will continue to improve, I'm convinced that the best way for me to achieve my racing goals for this year is to get lighter and fitter. When Eddie Merckx was asked how to get better his reply was "ride lots" and that's just what I'm going to do!

So for January my targets are 50 hours on the bike (approx 50/50 on/off road), 2kgs weight loss and one "horrible hills" session per week.

My Blog!

2011 is a momentous year for me - I turn 50 in February! Bikes and particularly mountain-biking have become an important part of my life since 2009 and this blog is going to be my attempt to keep a diary of my cycling year. Epic Club Spins, training, racing, targets and ups and downs will be included but most importantly I'm going to try and reflect the pleasure, satisfaction and just general sense of well being that cycling gives me!




The highlight of my cycling year in 2010 was the Roc D'Azur in France - here's myself and some of the Irish crew before the start. Double click photo to enlarge ... if you must!