London Calling

…So, I will just resume posting to this blog as though I hadn’t been AWOL from it for four months 🙂

Super quick updates:

• The most awkward/uncomfortable one first. I STILL continued to struggle with my eating and fitness the past few months, and I’ve put on about 8 pounds versus where I was in the most recent (April 1) post. So I am about 23 pounds over my best weight (reached this time last year) However, as I’ve said several times to friends & family, and reassuringly to myself, the best & most important thing is that in the long term, I don’t give up. I am taking up the fight again, and in the end, I will win this fight.

• I have ridden the bike a lot more over the past 4 months than I had in the previous 4-6 months. Still not as much as I would like, but I am getting back there again. I’ve had to make peace with several aspects of my fitness, the hardest of which is, I simply cannot do (right now) on a bike what I could do 8, 9 months ago. I’ve come to accept that, and in a strange way embrace it, as I am looking forward to an “improvement curve” from here forward.

• I have resumed going to the gym regularly. I owe my good friend Mr. V a debt of gratitude on this point, as without his help & support I probably wouldn’t have. I have experienced my best overall fitness and weight-loss results in the past during stretches of regularly attending gym, and it will once again be key for me now. I lift weights M-W-F mornings, and have been doing so for a couple months now. I am starting to very noticeably see & feel results. Once my body weight (read: fat loss) truly comes into its own, my efforts will become gradually more visible, as an overall body transformation is occurring.

• I’m going to turn again to running, although, as before, it will never be something I pursue as fondly (or enjoy nearly as much!) as cycling. I have intentions to run-walk perhaps 2-3 5k’s before the end of this running season. I haven’t yet began running training; intention is to lose weight & improve fitness for another few weeks and then start running training. My friend Mrs. K, with whom I completed my first (and thus far only) ever run-walk 5k (post here), has committed to doing one 5k with me over the next few months.

• I’ve still not yet returned to consistent randoing. I DID get in one, single, rando ride since the last update – I rode the Old KC Road 100-km (62 mile) route in mid-May, finishing it with (for me) a pretty solid time of 5:40. As I noted in the April 1 post, though, I am deliberately not going to return to rando until I feel confident that I am ready to treat it with the seriousness and respect that it deserves. I’ve stayed in contact with my friend, Ron A, whom I view as my rando mentor, and have assured him I won’t return till I am ready to return. No more treating rando like a casual weekend ride, in which you can go however far you want, skip a ride if you want, etc. Once you commit to a ride, you finish the ride. And that’s where I will be again, in time. My current thinking is to resume (minimally at first, and with increasing intensity) RUSA riding either sometime this month (August) or next, September. I won’t (initially, at least) go nuts and want to do 400+ km per month (which I was aiming for pre my “alienation” from riding), but rather, I will content myself at least initially with a single 100-km ride per month, building toward a P-12 (again).

Which brings me to the next point. Yes, I realize that given my current situation, this goal seems almost laughable, but I am going to give everything I have to achieve it. I am going to ride the 2017 occurrence of London-Edinburgh-London.

For my non-cycling friends: London-Edinburgh-London (LEL) is one of the two biggest rando events in the world. It takes place in late July every 4 years, and is a 1400-km (~870 miles) bike ride from London, England, to Edinburgh, and back.

Paris-Brest-Paris (PBP) is the “other” huge rando event (it’s quite a bit more well known, and has a bigger attendance), and is 1200 km (~745 miles). PBP also happens every 4 years.

However, with the next PBP being NEXT YEAR (i.e. one year off), and the next LEL being 3 years away, any wild dreams of my riding in PBP are completely unthinkable. Even LEL would be an incredible accomplishment for me, and it’s a full 3 years of work away.

With that bombshell of a goal announcement, I’m back to blogging, and will carry on as though the past year of backward progress had not even occurred.

“It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.” – Erma Bombeck