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All the Gear; No Idea

Posted by Richard on 13th August 2023
Posted in: Diary, Gear, Home Gym, Pain Cave, Running, Walking. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment

Our home gym here in Ash, Surrey continues to expand: we now have a Schwinn 800IC/IC8 for my virtual cycling with FulGaz and JRNY; we have a ForceUSA G3 All-In-One Gym Set coupled with a BodyMax 145kg Barbell and Weight Set; a ProForm Cardio HIIT L6 Trainer for herself to do her stair stepping; and now we’ve just added a Bowflex BFX56 Treadmill 56/Treadmill 22 (depending upon where in the world you are {metric/imperial}).

The Bowflex BFX56 Treadmill is their top of the range model and features a fabulous 22″/56cm screen for their JRNY app to run on and the deck can have an incline from -5% to +20% gradient and also folds to save a bit of space when not in use.

So yes, there’s no excuse for us not getting fitter and leaner.

Herself – despite being a qualified personal trainer – has also enlisted the help of another personal trainer who specialises in getting bodybuilding athletes ready for competition. Yes, Alison will soon be competing in some Bikini Class bodybuilding contests in 2024. Watch this space!

The plan then will be for her to start offering personal trainer services herself with a focus on women and particularly Mums/mature women who may not feel comfortable in a full-on gym situation.

Bowflex BFX56 Treadmill
Bowflex BFX56 Treadmill – Incline
Bowflex BFX56 Treadmill Folded
Bowflex BFX56 Treadmill Console
ForceUSA G3 All-In-One Trainer
ProForm Cardio HIIT L6 Trainer
Schwinn 800IC Bike
Schwinn 800IC Bike
Schwinn 800IC Bike and iPad

July 2023 Stats

Posted by Richard on 31st July 2023
Posted in: Cycling, Diary, Fitness, Walking, Weight. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment

July started out in Fuerteventura for a few days before I had to head back to the UK to then fly out to Johannesburg for a week and a half of pretty much full-on work that left no time for exercise, sadly. I did manage one workout in the hotel’s very basic gym on the Sunday morning before heading in to the Client’s office, but that was it.

Here are the results which are way down on June’s:

July 2023 Statistics

July 2023 Statistics

Activities: 21 Distance: 257.86 km Time: 16:28:38 Calories: 14,505

Turning to my weight, at the end of June I was 83.5kg, and after an impromptu meal out last night, this morning I weighed 83.9kg, up 0.4kg, but also up 0.9kg from the day before, so nothing to worry about.

 

June 2023 Stats

Posted by Richard on 1st July 2023
Posted in: Cycling, Diary, Fitness, indoor cycling, Walking, Weight. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment

Starting back at home in Ash, it was a lot of virtual cycling with the occasional walk on a ‘rest’ day, then we flew back out to Corralejo the last Monday of June.

Here are the stats:

June 2023 Stats

June 2023 Stats

Activities: 28 Distance: 556.93 km Time: 20:19:17 Calories: 17,855

As for weight stats, at the end of June I was 83.5kg, up 1.4kg from 82.1kg in May. Must. Try. Harder.

May 2023 Stats

Posted by Richard on 1st June 2023
Posted in: Cycling, Diary, Fitness, indoor cycling, Walking, Weight. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment

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

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 Stats

Posted by Richard on 30th April 2023
Posted in: Cycling, Diary, Fitness, Hiking, Walking, Weight. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a Comment

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

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}

Weight a Minute! It’s My Birthday!

Posted by Richard on 6th April 2023
Posted in: Diary, Fitness, Weight. Tagged: , , , . Leave a Comment

61 today! Dear Lord…

I celebrated by getting back on the pushbike for the first time in a few days as there have been strong winds and storms (enough for a weather warning here in Fuerteventura) but even so it was very windy and difficult, especially as it was a Northerly wind and the coast road heading back is North.

In the past 12 months, I’ve also gone from weighing 97kg this time last year to 85kg this morning (a loss of 12kg or nearly two stones). Sadly, I’ve gained a kilo in the last week because we’ve been eating out and the cooler weather pushed us towards some different food, but I’m really pleased.

Weight graph

Weight Graph

October 2022 Stats

Posted by Richard on 31st October 2022
Posted in: Cycling, Diary, Fitness, Gear, Weight. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a Comment

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).

October 2022 Stats

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).

September 2022 Stats

Posted by Richard on 1st October 2022
Posted in: Cycling, Diary, Fitness, Gear, Weight. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a Comment

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:

September 2022 Statistics

August 2022 Stats

Posted by Richard on 1st September 2022
Posted in: Cycling, Diary, Fitness, Gear, Walking, Weight. Tagged: , , , . Leave a Comment

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:

August 2022 Stats