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July 2026 Stats

Posted by Richard on 31st July 2026

Posted in: British Airways, Cycling, Diary, events, Fitness, Home Gym, indoor cycling, Media, Pain Cave, virtual cycling, Walking, Weight. Tagged: Apple Fitness+, Apple Watch, Barcelona, fat bastard, fēnix 7S, FulGaz, Garmin, Garmin Connect, health, holiday, Paris, ROUVY, scales, Schwinn, statistics, stats, update.

July 2026 saw a couple of heatwaves hitting the UK and of course July always means the Tour de France. I’ve been watching the coverage on TV for as long as I can remember now but never really got involved in any way … until this year. This year, it started in Barcelona with two and a bit stages and finished in Paris on the Champs-Elysées. I asked Alison if she wanted to go to Barcelona to see it and she jumped at the chance. I booked the InterContinental Barcelona as it was on the route for both the first and second stages:

And then Alison said, “Well if we’re going to see the start, wouldn’t it be lovely to see the finish?” So that’s how I ended up booking the Paris Marriott Champs-Elysées Hotel with a suite overlooking the Champs-Elysées itself, so we could watch the riders doing their laps and the finish line.

The Yellow, Green, Polka Dot, and White Jerseys on the Champs-Elysées

Business Class flights with British Airways and limousines from Blacklane all made it a little pricey… I’m hoping August will allow my wallet some respite from the absolute battering it got!

Other than that my normal exercise regime continued with a combination of rides on ROUVY as well as getting some of my usual John Hallas’ Weekly Challenges on FulGaz done. On ROUVY, I was doing their challenges and an occasional Sunday morning group ride.

I still need to actually go ahead and arrange a partial knee replacement, which we’ll do later this year maybe, if I can resolve when I won’t be travelling.

I also decided to try again with some Apple Fitness+ workouts, concentrating on upper body and core, as my legs get plenty of workouts already!

So, here are July’s stats:

July 2026 Statistics

Activities: 78 Distance: 626.79 km Time: 25:47:32 Calories: 18,827

Turning to my weight, at the end of June I weighed 92.7kg and at the end of July I weighed 93.4kg, so a gain of 0.7kg change over last month.

Body fat percentage was up from 27.5% to 28.0%, which is not really surprising.

March 2026 Stats and Selfies

Posted by Richard on 1st April 2026

Posted in: Castelli, Cycling, Diary, Fitness, Gear, Home Gym, indoor cycling, Media, Pain Cave, Road Cycling, virtual cycling, Walking, Weight, YouTube. Tagged: Corralejo, fat bastard, fēnix 7S, Fuerteventura, FulGaz, Garmin, Garmin Connect, health, holiday, ROUVY, scales, Schwinn, stats, update.

So March continued my normal exercise regime with a combination of rides on ROUVY as well as getting some of my usual John Hallas’ Weekly Challenges on FulGaz done. I’ve also recently enabled the warm-up and cool-down features on ROUVY to actually record the distance I’m cycling before and after each structured ride.

I still need to actually go ahead and arrange a partial knee replacement, which we’ll do in the early summer…

So, here are March’s stats which might look slightly different to usual again as I had to significantly increase screen resolution to fit them all in:

March 2026 Statistics

Activities: 71 Distance: 730.31 km Time: 27:08:18 Calories: 25,576

Turning to my weight, at the end of February I weighed 91.7kg and at the end of March I weighed 92.7kg, which is up by 1kg. I blame the holiday in Corralejo…

Body fat percentage was down from 27.7% to 27.3%, which is nice.

We had another holiday in Corralejo, Fuerteventura, at the end of March so I again hired a Specialized Allez Elite from Easy Riders Bike Centre and went for a morning ride each day from the villas at Bahiazul along the FV-1 to Tamaragua and/or the FV-104 between the shore and the famous dunes.

In total, I managed 206km whilst we were there (plus some walking/hiking).

I continued doing my little selfie videos to annoy friends on Facebook, so here’s a collection, all shot on my Apple iPhone 17 Pro.

Bahiazul Resort Fuerteventura: https://www.bahiazul.com/en/

Easy Riders Bike Center: https://www.easyriders-bikecenter.com/e/index.php

November 2025 Ride Selfies

Posted by Richard on 1st December 2025

Posted in: Castelli, Cycling, Diary, Fitness, Media, YouTube. Tagged: AfterShokz, Apple Fitness+, Apple Watch, Corralejo, fat bastard, fēnix 7S, Fuerteventura, Garmin, Garmin Connect, holiday.

We had another fortnight’s holiday in Corralejo, Fuerteventura, so I again hired a Specialized Allez Elite from Easy Riders Bike Centre and went for a morning ride each day from the villas at Bahiazul along the FV-1 to Tamaragua and/or the FV-104 between the shore and the famous dunes.

In total, I managed 300km whilst we were there (plus some walking/hiking).

I continued doing my little selfie videos to annoy friends on Facebook, so here’s a collection from November 2025, all shot on my Apple iPhone 17 Pro.

Bahiazul Resort Fuerteventura: https://www.bahiazul.com/en/

Easy Riders Bike Center: https://www.easyriders-bikecenter.com/e/index.php

March 2025 Ride Video Selfies

Posted by Richard on 2nd June 2025

Posted in: Cycling, Diary, Media, YouTube. Tagged: AfterShokz, Corralejo, cycling, Fuerteventura, Garmin Connect, holiday. Leave a Comment

When you’ve got a few days holiday in Corralejo, Fuerteventura, why wouldn’t you hire a Specialized Allez Elite from Easy Riders Bike Centre and go for a morning ride each day from your villa at Bahiazul along the FV-104 between the shore and the famous dunes?

In total, I managed 324km whilst we were there (plus some walking/hiking). See my March 2025 Stats post for details.

I started doing little selfie videos to annoy friends on Facebook, so here’s a collection from March 2025:

Bahiazul Resort Fuerteventura: https://www.bahiazul.com/en/

Easy Riders Bike Center: https://www.easyriders-bikecenter.com/e/index.php

FulGaz Challenges

Posted by Richard on 9th April 2025

Posted in: challenge, Cycling, Diary, events, Fitness, Home Gym, indoor cycling, Media, Pain Cave, virtual cycling. Tagged: cycling, fitness, FulGaz, Ironman, medal, Schwinn, statistics, stats. Leave a Comment

I realised I hadn’t done a proper update on the main challenges I did on FulGaz last year and this year: the Grand Tour 2025 and more importantly, perhaps, the Ironman Pro Sprint Series.

I can’t link to them, sadly, because with FulGaz’ acquisition by ROUVY, the event pages have disappeared.

Happily, though, I managed to screenshot the overall leaderboards/General Classification (“GC”) tables so I would have a permanent record of how I placed overall.

So here’s the GC for the Grand Tour 2025:

FulGaz Grand Tour 2025 GC

And more importantly, here’s the GC for the Ironman Pro Sprint Series:

FulGaz Ironman Pro Sprint Series GC

So, second on the Grand Tour and third on the Ironman Pro Sprint Series; not bad for an old fart like me.

Today my Ironman Pro Sprint Series medal arrived!

Grinning or Gurning?

Ironman Pro Series Medal

Fathers’ Day 32k Cycle Ride

Posted by Richard on 18th June 2017

Posted in: Cycling, Diary, Fitness, Media, Syndicated. Tagged: Garmin Connect, Le Pont de la Tour, London. Leave a Comment

OK, so we may have stopped off at Le Pont de la Tour for a champagne (or two) and a cocktail (or three) which might explain why the last 3km is on a later Garmin Connect entry…

Milton Keynes Half Marathon 2016 Photos and Video

Posted by Richard on 4th May 2016

Posted in: Media, Race, Running. Tagged: half marathon, Milton Keynes. Leave a Comment

Here are some photos and my finish line video from Bank Holiday Monday’s MK Half Marathon:

Berlin Marathon – Photos and Video

Posted by Richard on 4th October 2015

Posted in: Media, Running. Tagged: 2015 Berlin Marathon, Berlin, marathon, photos, video. 1 comment

So I ran my first marathon on 27 September 2015: the 42nd Berlin Marathon. Despite having done very little real preparation – you can see my running diary in earlier entries – I finished it in 5 hrs 27 minutes and 23 seconds. This time was engraved on the back of my medal which also shows the world record time set last year, just to rub it in! Anyway, here’s some video of me finishing as well as some of the photos on the course: