Cycling: You Are Never Too Old

Last year for some obscure reason I decided to grab my old mountain bike out of the garage and start cycling.

When I say old mountain bike I mean the one i bought 3 years ago and rode about 2 miles on since then (I bet you have one like that as well!!). I really don't know what made me start but I am glad I did.

The first day I went out I managed about 5 miles and had to walk up some small hills a week later i manged the same 5 miles with out having-to walk. within another week I was doing 10 miles a day. Then I noticed my trousers were getting too light. At this time I was hooked.

We live in a village in southern Spain and there is pretty much no where I can go without going up a hill about 8 weeks into cycling I decided i was going to tackle the hill into town , this is monstrous and I really didn't expect to be able to do it...but I did. I felt like a cycling god.

Then disaster struck..

I got quite ill over Christmas and I've had a few back problems since then so I've not cycled for 6 months I've put back on about 10 of the 20KG I lost when I was cycling. So it was back out on the road again this week (5 days before my 45th birthday) I can tell you it hurt but in was surprised that I could seem to still get up the hills that would have had to walk up last year. So I've still got some fitness in my legs..

I think i will treat myself to a new bike this week and get rid of my mountain bike and replace it with a proper road bike.. My aim is to do a 100 mile ride in a day. My maximum last year was about 30 which was pretty good considering where i started..

I'd be really happy to swap notes and stories with anyone In a similar position to me.

One day I would love to be able to climb mountains 1/10th as well as Lance Armstrong! I've added a video below as to me it's one of the most iconic images from modern cycling. This is know as "The Look" It's pure psychological warfare

Well I decided to get myself a new bike for my birthday. I looked around loads of shops and finally settled on a Fuji Team which is a carbon framed bike weithing 8kg about 17 lbs and half the weight of my mountain bike.

I took it out for a ride ...WOW over a 10 mile circuit I was 30% faster It's harder to climb hills as I don't have the gearing that I had on my mountain bike but i am sure that will come with practice.

Photo's are below

I went for a ride yesterday in the early evening on my way back I passed a couple of local garages that had didital thermometers showing the Temperature.. It was 35 degrees in the shade and I was riding by in the full glare of the sun. No wonder I was exhausted

Today I tried riding much earlier but even then by 10.30 am the temerature was just touching 30. I think my only option is going to be to set my alwarm for about 6.30 and get out riding before the sun gets too high in the sky

It's been 1 week since I got my road bike and I can see an improvement in my riding already. I've knocked 2 minutes off the circuit I currently use and have increased my average speed by over a 1 km per hour It might not sound like much but it's encouraging.

I am going to continue with the circuit I currently use for another week or 2 as It reallyhelps me to guage how fit I am becoming. The last 2 days I've come back feeling quite fresh 5 days ago I felt i was dying.

There are 3 hills on the circuit and I've managed to get up 1 of them in a higher gear for the last 2 days (now that is an achievement.!)

I've decided to turn my MTB into a project and build it with the sole aim of using it to climb some of the bigger off road hills around here ..and there are lots of those.

I am going to document the project in a seperate hub.

Project bike hub

After about 10 days of cycling just under 10 miles every day my weight has dropped from 105 kg to 101 kg which is just under 9 lbs. To be honest I shouldn't loose more than a kilogram or around 2 lbs per week but this intial drop is I suspect retained water. I try to keep an eye on my hydration levels (urine color is a good indicator)so I know that i am not dehydrated.

The great thing I find about cycling is that I can eat pretty much normally and I'll still lose weight when I cycle due to the number of calories burned when cycling to give you some idea of how good cycling is for buring calories below is a list of the calories burned in an hour at different speeds. At the moment I am getting close to averaging 15mph so i suspect that I am burning just around 820 calories for each hour I cycle

Cycling 10 mph 540

Cycling 12 mph 639

Cycling 13 mph 702

Cycling 14 mph 806

Cycling 15 mph 873

Cycling 16 mph 945

Cycling 20 mph 1,121

My target weight is about 85 KG or 180lbs I suspect I'll be able to do this in around 5 months If I keep cycling on a daily basis.

Weightloss record.

July 1st..... 105KG 231 lbs

July 10th....101KG 222lbs

I went for a ride yesterday and decided to vary my route a bit and ended up doing 22Km which is about 5 miles more than my normal distance. I felt really fresh afterwards so I decided to make my sunday ride even further.

The wierd thing is I was really looking forward to the ride. I set off at about 8.30 as i knew that by 10.30 it would be too hot. I got passed by a couple of other cyclists on a hill about a mile from my hous. I quite quite disapointed at how fast they left me behind, but then I found i could easily ride back up to them on the flat and downhill sections.

During the ride I passed lots of other riders coming the other way I counted about 40 in total which was pretty impressive. I cycled out to about 15km from my house and turned around and headed back. Once again I got passed by a group of riders this time it was a bout 20 of them ..and once again they left me standing on a hill. I looked behind and say another group coming up so I upped my speed a bit and stayed ahead of them for about 2km I was feeling great about this until the overtook me on a hill and I realised that they were all between 60 and 70!!

I later spotted a rider ahead and chased him down and over took him ... he must have been at least 80!!

I made it back home without any further problems and at least I now know 2 things... Firstly I really need to master climbing and secondly I have another 30 years of cycling ahead of me so there is plenty of time.