Training

Like I said in the prologue, I've always ridden fairly regularly, about 80 miles per week during the summer months, so I was starting with a reasonable fitness when I started training specifically for this about 18 months ago. First gave up playing darts (and the associated 4-5 pints and sausage + chips) on a Tuesday evening. Then stopped the fish + chips after Thursday night's badminton. Also our regular drinking buddies moved away so that was another 4-5 pints on a Saturday night which were largely removed. Without increasing the exercise, these actions alone meant I lost over half a stone.

I did two 'sportives' last spring. These are not races, riders start in groups at intervals, but everyone gets an official time and a medal based on that. The first one was 93 miles around Wiltshire with a fair amount of climbing. The time was 5:39 which got me a silver. I was elated by this, exactly the sort of time I would be expected to do on the ride, I was definitely in the right area. Two weeks later I did the Dartmoor challenge, 100 miles with over 12,000 feet of climbing. This was a disaster, over eight and a half hours, missed a bronze by 30 minutes and suffered all the way.

The intention was to do a lot of miles over the summer and then train in the gym and on the roads a bit during the winter. However by the end of August, with the rubbish weather, I hadn't done any more long rides and hadn't improved at all, it was clear things were going to have to change.

It was then I enlisted the help of a personal trainer. I typed 'personal trainer cycling Oxford' in to google and the name of Goose Dean popped out. I see him for 90 minutes once a week where he encourages, inspires, cajoles and bullies me into pushing myself much much harder than I could do on my own. It's a combination of rowing, cycling and cross training until I'm totally exhausted (that's the first 20 minutes) and then an hour or so of weights. It's been a revelation, part of this challenge was to see if at age 40 I could get into the best shape of my life. I've achieved that, smashing rowing times I set in my 20's. I also see him for a spinning session (which is like aerobics on a static bike). This really is a killer exercise session, my heart rate stays over 160 for more than an hour and I can barely crawl home afterwards.

Over the last few months I've gradually increased the amount of exercise. For the last few weeks the regime has been, Saturday 75+ mile ride, Sunday 40 mile ride, Monday killer spin, Tuesday another killer spin, Wednesday gentle swimming, Thursday getting 'Goosed' then badminton in the evening, Friday rest. That's the perfect week which I've stuck to 80-90% of the time. Have I done enough? I bloody hope so, it's been knackering. Kate's been fantastic throughout all of this but even she is getting fed up of me spending my evenings snoring on the sofa.