New Direction

It has taken me a while and a lot of thinking to decide where I want to go next and what I want to achieve.  One of the aims is still the same and that is to shift this remaining weight but after a fair period of stagnation I have decided to enlist the help of a coaching team.  I went to David and Stuart Percival at Mercury Performance Coaching a few weeks ago for an initial assessment and to start to look at where I will be heading this next twelve months.  After a battery of tests including a VO2 Max test on the bike the guys took the results away.  They have analysed the results and come back with a fully holistic training programme ranging from the cycling to the nutrition.  It is something that they will support me on fully sending daily workouts for the commute to work and some indoor sessions involving the Wattbikes.  They have also sent me some gym workouts and flexibility programmes.  Alongside this will run a nutrition programme.  They have worked out how many calories I need to sustain living and how many I will use over the course of an ‘average’ day.  Targets have been set and so have food groups.  I guess a diet.  Most of you will know food is my arch nemesis in that I love to eat and eat lots.  Having kept food diaries for a few weeks for the guys to look at it it was obvious even to me that what I was eating was a load of rubbish in terms of sustaining weight loss and getting the correct amount of all sorts of vitamins and minerals.  I am now in the process of looking at the diet and making some wide ranging changes.  I am sure that I will be able to keep to it but I guess there will be the odd slip knowing me.

This has all been going well I had managed to get a week of following the cycle sessions correctly for the most part and have been making subtle changes to my diet.  Then disaster last Friday.  Whilst commuting to work a car pulled up alongside me after some lights and made a left turn no indication.  This resulted in me ending up hitting the side of the car at around 20mph and ending up sprawled down the side road bike still attached.  The car stopped up the road and I got up to go and get the drivers details as the bike, my clothes and I had sustained some damage.  The car then drove off.  I was gobsmacked.  Fortunately a few bystanders had got her licence plate and car type as I was in a bit of shock.  I thought that I had definitely broken my arm and had pain in my knee along with road rash.  Mr James Jackson came to pick me up (hero) and took me home.  After about 30minutes of being at home the adrenaline and shock wore off and I was in a lot of pain.  Five and a half hours later in A&E I was to find out that my arm wasn’t broken just cut up and badly bruised.  The main concern was the knee which I had to return on Tuesday for another X-Ray due to the swelling.  Not broken but still needing crutches and painkillers as I could hardly walk I left and have been camped on the sofa ever since.  The Police came around and are looking into the ‘Failure to Stop’ which is an arrestable offence.  I am still waiting to see what happens with this.  In the midst of all this Bradley Wiggins and Shane Sutton (Head Coach at BC) get knocked off also by vehicles.  I am active on Twitter and soon there was a raging debate about whether or not cyclists should be on roads and about the infrastructure of the countries cycle paths etc.  There was also a lot of vitriol being spouted by people both drivers and cyclists.  Some of the comments where quite disturbing from people one saying something along the lines of lets have a day where we accidentally knock cyclists of their bikes.  Gobsmacking.  I have started following @cyclehatred who retweets driver’s views/opinions.  I may have to unfollow them soon as some of the things I am seeing are making me very angry and are astonishing.  Mutual respect is needed as an effort on both parts to obey the rules of the road and try to be a bit more observant of each other.  

Ned Flanders: “You were bicycling two abreast?”

Homer Simpson: “I wish. We were bicycling to a lake.”

-- The Simpsons, ‘Dangerous Curves’ (Episode 2005)