We came back from Corralejo, Fuerteventura, in early May 2023 so this month was a mixture of real-world cycling, virtual cycling and the occasional walk.
These are the stats:
May 2023 Stats
Activities: 29 Distance: 502.23 km Time: 22:12:12 Calories: 18,956
Moving on to weight, at the end of April I weighed 85kg but by the end of May I was down 2.9kg to 82.1kg with a low of 81.8kg.
April 2023 was spent in Corralejo, Fuerteventura, so that meant lots of real-world cycling and the occasional walk or hike during photoshoots/location scouting.
One downside was an ear infection needing a visit to the Centro Salud – which is still not properly sorted – that seemed to be going around friends and family.
Still, these are the stats:
April 2023 Stats
Activities: 28 Distance: 304.14 km Time: 18:27:44 Calories: 12,657
Moving on to weight, at the end of March I weighed 83.7kg but by the end of April I was up 1.3kg to 85kg due to family being out for 2 weeks plus my birthday meals. {sigh}
We flew back to Fuerteventura in the early morning this week and the following day I was back on it with the cycling – real world, rather than virtual – so today I recorded the ride to show the difference in weather since the start of the year.
It’s unlisted over on YouTube:
Another month flies by! We’ve spent all of January 2023 out in Corralejo, Fuerteventura, which means that all my exercise has been outdoor. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the weather has actually felt really wintry – for Fuerteventura, anyway! – with strong winds, cloudy conditions and the occasional bit of rain, even!
On the days it’s been too windy to cycle, I’ve tried to walk. So here are the stats from Garmin Connect:
January 2023 Stats
Activities: 33; Distance: 346.85 km; Time: 22:41:46; Calories: 15,798.
As for my weight, this morning it’s 87.5kg after a really bad weekend for eating out (and drinking) but at least it’s still down by 0.8kg from the end of December when my weight was 88.3kg.
Here’s a little video of today’s ride. I’m actually wearing a new cycle helmet after I got stopped yesterday by the Guardia Civil for not wearing a helmet on rural roads:
Well most of December 2022 was spent on the Schwinn doing FulGaz challenges but we flew out to Fuerteventura at oh-dark-hundred hours yesterday and today I finished off the year with a real-life 15km road ride on the MTB. So here’s December’s stats showing the 650km overall distance:
December 2022 Stats
That means that 2022’s stats overall are:
Activities: 306; Distance: 2,960.23 km; Time: 194:39:42; Calories: 122,924.
As for my weight, well it’s too late to measure like for like today because I’ve had coffee, freshly-squeezed orange juice and croissants out in the garden this morning, but yesterday’s weight was 88.3kg. That’s down by 9.6kg (21.2lbs or 1½ stone) from New Year’s Day 2022 when my weight was 97.9kg. That’ll do, pig!
We flew out to our place in Fuerteventura again on Saturday 1st October and after the weekend I started back with the real-world cycling on the Monday, having decided to up the ante a tad with my distances and to make sure I was following my consultant’s orders to do at least 30 minutes a day.
I’m still pleased with the result: 331.33km this month (including walking).
In other news, we’ve gone a bit keto with our diets and the results are promising: I weighed 93.3kg on the Garmin Index S2 scales we have here at the start of the month and today I weigh 91kg (up 0.5kg from yesterday morning, which was a new low since the crash and muscle-wasting in July 2019).
With the Schwinn’s arrival came physiotherapy, pain consultations and then experiments with Apple Fitness+, the first year’s free subscription to Bowflex’s JRNY app, and a trial of FulGaz. The latter two are different from Fitness+ in that Apple are offering different duration classes only whereas the other two offer virtual rides using video of the actual routes.
In FulGaz’s case, they are adaptive workouts: speeding up or slowing down the videos to suit your pace/power which the app reads from the Schwinn. They’re also linked to my Garmin fēnix 7S for my heart rate.
The other benefit of using FulGaz is that after each ride, it emails you a FIT file which you can import into Garmin Connect giving you the full details of the ride. JRNY does not do this, sadly.
So hitting the Schwinn every has been beneficial for me, but also for my weight which has been coming down slowly, thereby improving the load on my knee.
Here’s my stats for the 399km – mainly virtual/indoor – in September 2022:
We were still out in Corralejo for the first half of August 2022.
Back in London, it was a case of hammering the cheapo indoor bike, thinking we’d buy a Peloton bike when we move to Surrey and have a bigger garage and separate gym. The Amazon special was OK, but I couldn’t stand up on it despite the Apple Fitness+ trainers suggesting I could.
And then a couple of things happened: a news article about Peloton’s losses being “an existential threat” made us think about whether a Peloton would be a good idea after all. They’re very expensive and rely on a paid subscription to Peloton if you want to do the guided rides (which I had really enjoyed in Big Sur). If they went bust, the screen would effectively be useless and the purpose of the really expensive bike would go with them.
I looked at what Apple recommended/were using for their Fitness+ workouts and they were Schwinn bikes. In the UK they’re supplied by – amongst others, I’m sure – Fitness Superstore and they had an offer on the Schwinn 800IC (formerly the IC8): already listed at half list price, they had an additional 10% off for the Bank Holiday weekend, so I pressed the button on one for delivery in early September.
Here are the stats for my 266km in August 2022:
July 2022 was spent out at our home in Corralejo, Fuerteventura.
This meant I could use the mountain bike I have out there for lots of bike rides and the occasional walk – rather than vice versa – and I racked up around 250km that month:
Back in June 2022, I was walking for fitness but was having a lot of pain in my bad knee, the one that I’d seen a consultant about back in 2012 who said I should stop running … before I ran the Berlin Marathon and a couple of half-marathons.
I had been recommended cycling, so was trying to introduce more of this into my training and then went to the USA in early June to do the Pacific Coast Highway. While we were there, I tried a Peloton fitness bike in a really expensive hotel we stayed at in Big Sur and started looking into buying one, just before seeing my consultant again.
He again recommended some weight loss and half an hour every day on a bicycle, with a recommendation for a cheap static bike. That got me into finally using Apple Fitness+ and 30 minute rides.
So, here are my stats for June 2022.
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