fitness

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November 2024 Stats

Posted by Richard on 30th November 2024
Posted in: challenge, Cycling, Diary, Fitness, Home Gym, indoor cycling, Pain Cave, Running, Syndicated, virtual cycling, Weight. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment

November 2024 was more work, work, work keeping me busy, plus a number of trips into London for work and pleasure (The Script and London Grammar) and Motorcycle Live at the NEC Birmingham, all of which somewhat disrupted my training schedule.

Over on FulGaz, I continued their Around the World in 80 Days challenge as well as doing some more of John Hallas’ Weekly Challenges and another Ironman Sprint Series ride. Plus I continued with yet more (painful) treadmill runs with JRNY as well.

Anyway, here are November’s stats:

November 2024 Statistics

November 2024 Statistics

Activities: 29 Distance: 406.37 km Time: 17:52:00 Calories:  17,145

Turning to my weight, at the end of October I weighed 86.7kg and at the end of November I weighed 85.9kg, which is down by -0.8kg.  Still eating too many sweets and dried pineapple of an evening with the cats!

September 2024 Stats

Posted by Richard on 20th September 2024
Posted in: Cycling, Diary, Fitness, Gear, Home Gym, indoor cycling, Pain Cave, Running, virtual cycling, Walking, Weight. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment

September 2024 saw the end of the holiday theme starting with a few days in Prague and ending with a weird week in Corralejo. Weird? Well the last time we were there it was as residents moving back to the UK full time and this time we were back as bloody tourists staying once more at Bahiazul.

The complex contains the ‘main’ Bahiazul operated villas but also others we’ve used before: Villas Veaco and KATIS Villas. The upside of booking with Bahiazul is two-fold:

  • Breakfast in their restaurant is included so that sets you up nicely for the day; and
  • You have access to the gym which is relatively good, though not as good as our Pain Cave.

As far as I was concerned, I could simply run or walk but my knees and post-crash issues make that uncomfortable to say the least, plus I wanted to ride a bike anyway.  This meant hiring a mountain bike from Easy Riders which was a painless experience and recommended.  As I knew I’d be heading out on the roads past the dunes, I needed to wear a bike helmet and didn’t fancy hiring one, so I bought an alpinestars Vector Pro Atom helmet and some needlessly flash Galibier Campionissimo Luxury gloves. Both were excellent.

The hire bike – a Trek Marlin 7 – had two issues for me:

  1. The gearing was great for climbs and no doubt spot-on for off-road riding, but on the road I was unable to pedal quicker than 31km/h due to the low gearing (104rpm cadence).  My fault for choosing an MTB but the road surfaces can be a tad iffy out there.
  2. The seat post kept descending due to my weight and the bumps, so I was needing to stop to heave it back up again because I didn’t have the necessary Allen key.

Lesson learned and next time I may hire a road bike or choose one with a larger front sprocket.

Anyway, here are September’s stats:

September 2024 Stats

September 2024 Stats

Activities: 41 Distance: 406.47 km Time: 31:12:40 Calories:  20,118

Turning to my weight, at the end of August I weighed 85.4kg and at the end of September I weighed 87.1kg, which is up 1.7kg.  Too many good breakfasts and restaurant dinners!

August 2024 Stats

Posted by Richard on 31st August 2024
Posted in: Cycling, Diary, Fitness, Home Gym, indoor cycling, Pain Cave, Running, Walking, Weight. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment

August 2024 continued the holiday theme following my son, Jack’s wedding before heading off to Venice for a few days at the Hilton Molino Stucky and ending with a few days in Prague at probably the best hotel we’ve ever stayed at, the Mandarin Oriental.

Hitting the gym at these luxury hotels was difficult so we also went walkabout a lot – Alison is going to compete in 2025 in the Masters’ Bikini Class, so needs to bang in many thousands of steps every day along with her workouts.

So here are August’s stats:

August 2024 Stats

August 2024 Stats

Activities: 22 Distance: 288.87 km Time: 21:34:09 Calories:  14,161

Turning to my weight, at the end of July I weighed 84.7kg and at the end of August I weighed 85.4kg, which is up 0.7kg.

September 2023 Stats

Posted by Richard on 30th September 2023
Posted in: Cycling, Diary, Fitness, Gear, Home Gym, indoor cycling, Pain Cave, Running, virtual cycling, Walking, Weight. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment

September started out in Dubai for a week and a bit in a five star, all-inclusive resort which thankfully had a gym but was using Technogym kit and software, sadly.  Once we were home, it was back in the pain cave on the Schwinn and the Bowflex treadmill before I headed off for a day trip to Raleigh, North Carolina.  Yes, what should have been a little over week there in a hearing turned out to be arrive, work, workout, get told about potential settlement, rush to the airport, redeye back to London!

Once back in the pain cave – and I’m really not sure if the iOS/watchOS software updates had anything to do with it – FulGaz started started having issues connecting to the Schwinn which was very frustrating.  It even happened again this morning, until I physically turned off the Bowflex treadmill which seems to somehow steal focus even though it’s not connected to the Schwinn (obviously).

Oh and I have finally upgraded by old Apple Watch Series 4 to a shiny new Apple Watch Ultra 2 which I’m keen to get properly set up and  calibrated properly: that JRNY treadmill run had the treadmill showing one distance, the fēnix showing a slightly shorter distance, and the Ultra 2 showing a significantly longer distance.  I will have to compare an outdoor walk next week when we’re back in Corralejo.

Mrs RHM has also upgraded to an Apple Watch Series 9.

Here are the results which are down from August’s:

September 2023 Stats

September 2023 Stats

Activities: 36 Distance: 370.63 kmTime: 17:49:39 Calories: 16,260

Turning to my weight, at the end of August I was 84.1kg, and at the end of September I weighed 84.3kg, up 0.2kg, but then there was Dubai and Raleigh…

August 2023 Stats

Posted by Richard on 10th September 2023
Posted in: Cycling, Diary, Fitness, Home Gym, indoor cycling, Pain Cave, Running, Walking, Weight. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment

August started out in Fuerteventura for a few days before we headed back to the UK.  It ended with us flying out to Dubai for a week and a bit in a five star, all-inclusive resort which thankfully had a gym but was using Technogym kit and software, sadly.

Here are the results which are up from July’s:

August 2023 Statistics

August 2023 Statistics

Activities: 39 Distance: 476.41 kmTime: 22:39:33 Calories: 20,176

Turning to my weight, at the end of July I was 83.9kg, and at the end of August I weighed 84.1kg, up 0.2kg, but then there was Dubai…

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.

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