Eggs and Aches

Merry Easter!

Today sees a very very stiff James typing to you.  Good Friday saw the massive football game between Sale and Altrincham.  The turnout was immense a crowd of around forty people (more then at some City games this season) came down to watch this epic clash and braved the overcast drizzly weather.  The game was hotly contested with some moments of brilliance and some moments of controversy.  Obviously being a man of high values and morale integrity I couldn’t possibly say that one of Altrincham’s goals was about 10 yards offside…oops.  The game was very even and after extra time and a last ten second equaliser from James Jackson the score ended up 4-4.   Again I would just like to thank everyone who came down and supported us and to all the players who payed to play.  Special thanks to the cake bakers and the organisers of both teams.  All in all the game has raised in the region of £210 which is an excellent total!  Both Mark and myself are immensely grateful for your support! 

I haven’t been out this week on a big cycle for two reasons.  Earlier in the week it was my belief that I would be having a nice four days of long ride training session over the Easter weekend.  My body however has put paid to that and I am hoping to get over the muscle soreness, bruising and generally not being able to move after the football game for a ride on Monday and Tuesday.  I have not been in this much pain since the last time I played football.  Maybe my body is trying to tell me something i.e stop playing football.  I did really enjoy the football though and love getting involved with the games.  It was especially good as it was for charity.  So I will be out tomorrow on some hills somewhere so please listen out for the screams!! 

My commute has turned from a nice 35 – 40minutes effort to being infected with Strava competitiveness and trying to smash different segments.  The competition demon is raising its head.  My best effort this week was a 3^rd out of 49 people who have attempted the Partington Mile Sprint heading towards Urmston.  I nearly goosed myself and still had 30 minutes riding to do to get home!  It really is quite addictive knowing that you are challenging others openly online!

On the fundraising front this week people donated a superb £80.00 taking the total up to £1080.00.  Closing in on the target of £1500 quickly now.  We have a few events left to run which should see us raise enough money to get over the line.  We are keeping the event money together until after the last event and splitting it between Mark and myself onto our pages so don’t worry if you don’t see massive lumps of money being deposited.  We will have our last event on the 25^th May and then will add the money to the donations pages! 

If you still want to donate you can do at www.charitygiving.co.uk/jamescrossland or you can email me to buy some raffle tickets for our 50/50 draw.  Next event will be a Race Night;

Again many thanks to everyone so far for their donations and support!!

Charity football and cakes

Friday April 6^th @ 11:00am Kick Off

Sale Leisure Centre vs Altrincham Leisure Centre

Charity Football Match @ Partington Sports Village

50p Spectator Fee – Cake stall and raffle tickets (£2 each with a possible prize of £1000) available

Another glorious week it was.  Really enjoyed the commuting this week although the mornings have been chilly.  More then made up for though with a sunny return home.  Thursday saw a trip out with Mr Gordon into Cheshire and my first view of Alderley Edge, which was spectacular.  It also gave me a little break after cycling up Wizard Hill, which is in all honesty a bit of a beast.  There was also a deceptively strong wind, which Ted did well to shield me from (he was route finder).  I did a little bit on the straights and found it ok.  It was nice to sit on someones wheel as Mark who I usually ride with is small and doesn’t provide much shelter in that department.  Saving the energy was definitely something I noticed.  I am guessing that in Ireland we are going to face some strong winds but we will have to see what happens.  The other bonus to the route is the cycling app Strava that we are all using.  It basically tracks your route and allows you to record PB’s but also it uploads them to a website where you compete along certain segments with other riders.  A few of us are taking it quite seriously others are just happy with beating their previous bests.  It is good banter to see everyone putting max efforts in on certain segments for bragging rights.

Thursday also saw another massive effort from the Swim Trafford ladies and gents during spinning.  It was good to see everyone putting in 110% even Coach Stannard was impressive!  April 19^th will see a charity spin and more info will follow about this.  James and Jan at Stretford are doing a great job of getting people signed up to the charity spinning masterclass on May 5^th so many thanks to them.

This Friday sees the face off between Sale and Altrincham Leisure centres.  Braging rights for another few months at stake.  The game kicks off at 11:00am.  I am hoping the weather stays fairly nice and does not revert to being freezing for the game.  Please feel free to come down the game should be entertaining and the cake stall will have some professional wares from Lushbrownies (Twitter: @lushbrownies).  There will also be some other baked items on sale to :-))

This week we managed to raise £145.00 which takes the total to £990.00.  Again thanks to everyone who has donated and please if you want to donate please do!  A special thank you to Mr Mark Beddis who made an amazing £100 donation this week.  Very much appreciated and very generous!  May karma reward you this week sir!  I would also like to say a big thank you to Julie Kippax on her raffle ticket selling exploits!  The address to donate is www.charitygiving.co.uk/jamescrossland or you can speak to me in person or via email (jamescrossland007@hotmail.com)  above!   I also have some raffle tickets for a 50/50 draw whereby you could win 50% of the takings from the sales of the raffle tickets!  There are 1000 tickets so you could potentially win £1000 if we manage to sell them all!

Have a great week everyone and sorry about being late again!

Theee sunn isss shinninnnggg!!

Friday April 6^th @ 11:00am Kick Off

Sale Leisure Centre vs Altrincham Leisure Centre

Charity Football Match @ Partington Sports Village

50p Spectator Fee – Cake stall and raffle tickets available

A bit of early advertising never hurts right?  I hope you can all make it down to watch the game and participate in some cake eating.  A few people have kindly agreed to bake for me but if its something you feel you want to get involved with please let me know.  Also looking for a couple of volunteers to help with the cakes and selling raffle tickets so if your interested either comment below or you can email me at jamescrossland007@hotmail.com.

This week we managed to raise £20.00 which takes the total to £845.00.  Again thanks to everyone who has donated and please if you want to donate please do!  The web address is www.charitygiving.co.uk/jamescrossland or you can speak to me in person or via the email above!   I also have some raffle tickets for a 50/50 draw whereby you could win 50% of the takings from the sales of the raffle tickets!  There are 1000 tickets so you could potentially win £1000 if we manage to sell them all!

This week has been an absolute pleasure to ride in.  The weather has been absolutely fantastic and made for my fastest time to work on Thursday.  11.4miles in 39 minutes with a few traffic light stops in there for good measure.  This worked out at an average speed of 17.5mph, which is pretty good going for me.  Had a pretty poor event happen on the way home on Friday when some fools threw two glass bottles at me as I was cycling past in Stretford.  Not a nice experience as they missed by mere inches.  I cannot believe people would intentionally go out to hurt others in such a mindless manner.   Then to perk me up a little a chap on a hybrid jumped past me at the lights and went for it so I responded and left him with lycra images.  This lightened my mood somewhat!

On top of the commuting mark we had some fun on the wattbikes on Wednesday evening taking up the challenge to see how far we could cycle in 30seconds.  In answer 504 metres.  In perspective Sir Chris Hoy can cycle 200+ metres in 10 seconds, which is amazing.  Mark and I also got out for a ride.  A double loop of the Town > Stretford > Urmston > Partington > Lymm > Altrincham > Sale > Home ride.  The weather was glorious and we both generally felt great even after spending 3.5hours in the saddle.  I did however contrive to miss a clip in on the way back and smash my particulars into the front of the seat not my best of moments! 

The events will start to come thick and fast so keep an eye out and come and support us people!  Have a great week and let us hope the lovely weather continues!

To Blackpool...are we lost...

Hello everyone,

Sorry I am late by a lot this week been very busy on the bike this weekend and trying to fit everything else around it.  Training for the Ireland ride.  This week saw a number of really good training days and I’m going to include today in that also (Monday 19^th)  Hit a good ride on Tuesday up around Partington then out to Lymm, Altrincham and back into town via Oxford Road.  It was my best ride of the week for consistency of speed and I felt good all the way around.  Wednesday saw the Wattbike Wednesday session and a bit of banter on Twitter with @wattbike and @markoreilly before the session added some spice.  A few sprint intervals later and a maximum effort where I was over 1100watts and Mark was over 10watts we called it a draw!  This weekend saw both Mark O’Reilly and myself head out for three days of training for the Ireland adventure.  Saturday saw a repeat of the Tuesday route and a revelation revealed itself in Mark’s great climbing (hills on a cycle) ability.  Very impressed.  He does weigh in at 62kg and is a fit guy so if I had put together this I should have expected him to climb well, none the less very nice.  Like I have said before I am hoping to get better at this aspect of cycling over the next few months and that can only come through training and weight loss.  I do enjoy climbing but not seeing people disappearing at the first sight of a hill.  Saying that on Sunday we took a trip up to The Old Brickworks again in Macclesfield and it wasn’t to bad.  Legs where tired and I am struggling with the gears on me bike still it does not want to go into the low gears so I’m going to have to take that to get looked at again.  Not sure if it’s me mistreating the bike or just a mechanical fault.  So Monday we decided to try and go some way into the route up to Blackpool using my near faultless memory and directional sense…needless to say after about an hour and a half we got lost ended up in Wigan did a big circuit and headed back to Manchester with a puncture thrown in on the way back for good measure.  We didn’t just go home though and took in the Partington > Lymm > Alty > Town route again.  My legs where not responding very well on the ride today and I am still not getting the water/food balance correct I don’t think.  One thing I have found is that Jam butties are great for energy food!

I have had a new cycling app recommended to me.  It is called Strava and it is a GPS tracker with a difference.  The difference is it allows you to set up an account and try to beat others segments.  A point from A to B is measured and a leaderboard produced.  It obviously creates some competition.  The other thing it does is allows you to see where you are improving by having an achievements section.  It does use a lot of battery power nearly 100% over 5 hours.

This coming week will see a couple of gym sessions thrown in and a Wattbike Wednesday.   This is so I can start to work on muscles, which are being recruited but are not the primary’s for cycling.  This will help with muscle fatigue and also help to increase aerobic capacity.  Also I need some variation as the bike is where I have been living for a while and a change is as good as a rest.  Not that I won’t be cycling at all mind!

On the charity front I am going to sit down this week and see what day my cameraman and Mrs can come and film the great tiger cycle ride to Partington.   So watch this space for some entertaining video and pics!  Should hopefully be done by mid April!

You can donate here at www.charitygiving.co.uk/jamescrossland and if you are feeling really generous you can also donate to www.charitygiving.co.uk/markoreilly if you want to split a donation between the two of us that would be most awesome!

This week we raised a great £44.00 so thanks to all who donated to the cause and keep the donations coming.  This leaves me on 55% of the total I need to raise and £825.00 to the good.

Cheers all and catch you this week hopefully!

Doppy Dog

Hiyas!  What a week of variance!  The start of the week saw the daily grind take hold for a few days until Thursday really.  Commute…work…commute…eat…sleep REPEAT x 3.  Thursday the week came to life with some enjoyment.  Some people would call it torture or a waste of time but not I.  A trip out to some nice hills around Macclesfield with my good friend Ted.  It was nice to get out and do a three hour ride but the company was good to.  It is the second time this year we have been able to get out and ride.  This time there was a bit more time to chat as there where a few more hills to grind up and chew the phat.  To be honest I was mostly just saying yes and no as I laboured up them but not as laboured as last year.  The ride gave me a huge amount of confidence and I have improved in a number of ways.  A couple of mph faster on the climbs and no stopping meant I was chuffed on reaching the top of the climbs.  There was still a little bit of ‘bonking’ (running out of energy in the legs) on the trip back from Macclesfield but I survived longer this time.  I also managed to fall off at a set of traffic lights whilst trying to unclip.  You think you have a skill nailed down then it bites you in the ass!  I also managed to get a little lost when I left Ted in Wilmslow and like a doppy dog chased some buses down Princess Parkway with nothing left in the tank.  So enjoyed it.  Euphoric.  No wattbikes this week after calamity Wednesday when Mark left his phone at home and sat beeping outside of my block of flats in the vain hope of attracting my attention, which he didnt of course whilst i was texting asking if he was ok lol.  Agh well there's always this week!

Onto the charity fundraising.  It’s going great guns!  Again thank you to everyone who has donated this week and in over the course of the effort.  I would like to say sorry if I have been annoying people in my efforts to get people to donate.  It’s a combination of over excitement, nervousness at trying to raise the £1500 and just generally trying to remind people to donate if they have said they would.  So apologies if you have seen it as badgering etc.  This week saw the total surpass £750 and as promised I will be donning my tiger suit for a ride to work in Partington.  Just need to finalise the photography and maybe a cheeky video then I will let you know the date and time!  I will obviously post the pics and video on here also!!

Raised this week £63.00

Total Raised so far £781.00

I have some raffle tickets to sell with a possible top prize of £1000 so if you want any please let me know. There is also the Charity Football Match on the 7^th April at Partington Sports Village at 13:30 please come down and watch should be entertaining.  Finally there are rumours of a race night being held so watch this space!

Enjoy your week people!

Changes

Had a busy week and a nice few days off to top it all off.  Been commuting in really nice weather is so nice.  It’s allowed me to go the long way home through the back of Partington via Dunham Massey and back through Altrincham and Sale.  The traffic is rush hour style at the time I’m getting back which is a little annoying but I’ll have to get used to it!  The end of the week has seen two days worth of nice rides.  By this I mean 2 hours ish.  I have also had the pleasure of getting out with company, which always spurs me on and keeps me pushing.   Nice weather plus company equals a happy Crossland.

A couple of people have asked me about figures.  The statistics of my weight loss over the past 12 months.  To be honest I haven’t got any precise figures of the loss.  I am going off clothes like I said before.  I have, however got a couple of pictures, which kind of sum up the journey.

Late 2010

Feb 2012

So you may be able to see a small difference…  Honestly though I can’t believe I was that big.  I have had a mental picture of myself over the years and it is hard to try and get my head around the fact that I was that big.  It has taken me a while to get to where I am and it will take a good few months to get to where I’m going but to say I am happy with the progress is an understatement.  If I had the time to thank people who have helped and those who have pushed I would list them here.  At the end of the day though I have to give myself a firm pat on the back as it is me who is doing this.  I’m giving myself a clap :-)  Thanks to you all and keep pushing me it helps!

My favourite topic is obviously the bike at the moment as it has been for some time now and I am certain will be for a number of years to come.  I have been preparing for the Ireland ride over the last few weeks and if anyone thinks cycling is a cheap hobby can think again!  Bib shorts, shoes, bike fit, new stem and seat (because I really really really don’t want a case of numb groin again!) and a host of other bits and bobs for the trip.  I am really confident it’s all coming together nicely and I will be well on the way come June.  I went to see Rich at Pedal Precision (www.pedalprecision.com)  again this week, his plush new office at the Velodrome suits his expertise.  I also want to say how much of a genius Rich is at what he does…he is a genius.  We spoke about an issue with my knee, which has been causing me pain and my fear of numb groin returning during the Ireland ride.  Reassured, cleats adjusted a little tinkering with the position on the bike, new stem and saddle and I am 100% confident I will make it around Ireland. 

On the charity front everything is coming together nicely apart from being rejected for a bag packing stint at my local ASDA.  Just a letter back saying no sorry.  No reason has left me a bit frustrated with them.  It has been another good week for donations this week we have collected £71.50 leaving my running total so far at £718  As we speak I am having the Tiger suit dry cleaned and have arranged for a good friend to come and get some photographic evidence.  There may even be a short film if I get a headcam in time.  Watch this space (or not if it offends).  Over the next two months I will be selling raffle tickets for £2 a ticket with a chance to win half of all the money collected from the raffle ticket sales it’s called a 50/50 raffle!   Please let me know if you would like to buy some or if you can sell some, which would be a great help!

See you next week people.  Have a great week!

Well Deserved People.

This weekend saw the 5^th Trafford Community Leisure Trust Awards evening.  The event is held once a year to reward the staff in the company for their excellent work throughout the year via a voting system, which is completed in December.  What I like most about the evening is that I get to see people from other centres and catch up with them.  It’s really nice to have a drink and a chat about what’s going on where and with whom (gossiping).  The other great thing of course is people receiving awards that have been voted for by their peers and the public.  Afterwards a large group of us took over Mambo’s in Urmston and danced and drank until the early hours of the morning.  It was another great night with friends.

On to the fitness.  This week I’m really beginning to notice the loss of weight.  I need another set of holes in the belt (or buy a new belt…) and old clothes are starting to fit again (not that they where ever in fashion).  This is down to the miles on the bike.  The journey is routine now and because the lighter nights are creeping in it’s about time I started adding to the routes on the way home.  The temperature has also been a bit out of sync with the time of year a balmy 14 degrees on Thursday was much appreciated.  Spinning with Swim Trafford was really good on Thursday night although with a strong headwind on Friday morning I really did struggle to make a decent pace as my legs where heavy.  I know this is a feeling I am going to have to get used to in Ireland though so it is good preparation for that!  I have also this week treated myself to a Garmin Edge 500 cycling computer.  The amount of data I am getting from it is staggering and really helpful.  It comes with a heart rate monitor and cadence measuring abilities which is helping me to define the ranges in my training really easily.  The bike has also been in to Evans on Deansgate for a service and some new brakes.  There where some interesting noises coming from the crank and front forks, which have also been ironed out!  Ted was also showing me the new Pinnacle bikes they have which look like amazing value for money.  As always a brilliant service from the team down there!

On the fundraising front it has again been a very productive week.  Along with the charity football match in April there has now been a charity spinning masterclass session sorted for Saturday May 5^th.  I’m really looking forward to it and more information to follow on that.  Also it looks like Marvin who works for TUfC has got me a slot on Peace FM (90.1) for a week on Thursday to promote the ride, which if it comes off will be amazing.  Finally a big thank you to Katy Wood who got a piece in the Hull Daily mail for me on Saturday last week.  You can have a read here  Hull Daily Mail

This week we have raised £85 as I write, which moves the total forward to £646.50.  I am getting nervous that with just over a month to go it looks like I will hit the £750 raised to trigger the Tiger suit ride to Partington… watch this space!

As always you can donate to www.charitygiving.co.uk/jamescrossland or see Kelly Strickland at Stretford, Vicky Connor or Andy Dowson at Sale or myself to make a donation in person.  Lots of you have pledged to donate please follow this up!!

Have a great week and make it First Class!