My usual smoothie recipe. Disaster struck as I have run out of Nutella. I love Nutella on everything now, and that’s a problem because it isn’t cheap and it probably isn’t that great for me especially when I’m not cycling.
Lunch – GIANT salad
Sometimes I think the salads that I make are actually too big to be good for me.
Mixed leaf salad
Vine tomatoes (from the grocers down the road)
Red onion
Pepper
Chicken covered in Nandos sauce
Uncle Ben’s Spicy Mexican whole grain rice
Dinner – straight out of the Co-op
Roasted Mediterranean vegetables (a lot of roasted red onion and 1 piece of courgette)
Stuffed mushroom
Crispy potato slices.
All in all this seemed like quite a good day with a lack of snacking but I did end up eating a peanut butter sandwich late in the evening. I’m also aware that I should have done some stretching yesterday or got out of the flat for a bit longer with me being unable to cycle this weekend.
I know that from Monday I’m going to have to start organising my food a bit more in advance to stop me from just picking at things when I get hungry. Ideally I want to start losing some weight before the end of October for the last Sportive I plan on riding this year – hopefully on new bike.
Going back to work is now looming over me like a heavy storm cloud (much the opposite to the current weather situation). As I write this post, the sky outside is bright blue, not a cloud to be seen and a gentle breeze is moving the rapidly browning leaves of the tree outside. I’m struggling to focus on the weather though.
Officially I’m back to work on Thursday for two days of inset, but I will also be in on Thursday. I’m meeting a colleague for coffee before trying to organise our rooms for the return of children.
What I’m also conscious of is maintaining my weight. At the start of the summer holiday my body was a well oiled machine, ready to complete the Prudential Ride London 100. I had lost almost 1st (6kg) before the ride and completed 100 miles in 5 hours, averaging 20mph (32kmh). Over the course of the summer I have somehow managed to not put much of that weight back on and currently weigh 11st 7lbs (73kg) but I am aware of the impact going back to work can have.
What I therefore plan on doing is keeping a record, via this blog, of my eating, exercise and the stresses of going back to work. I know I’m not going to have as much time to cycle, or time to prepare meals but I am hoping that by keeping this record it will maintain my motivation to keep working on my body and keeping up with the demands of the new school year.
I know at the start of the post that going back to work is looming over like a large storm cloud, and it is, but I am also really excited to go back to work. I’m excited to see students and staff, and to hit the ground running this year. Last year I hated teaching, I hated the school I had been at and I was going to work to collect my cheque on a weekly basis. Now I know I’m in a supportive school with students who (not all) want to work hard I know that I can work hard for them to help them achieve.
I also realised I should probably add a note about my plans and goals for this year, just for my own personal record. In terms of work I want to be looking at establishing myself in a role of responsibility within my department, hopefully taking charge of a key stage or at least a year group.
In terms of cycling, I am currently planning on taking part in a sportive on my birthday at the end of October, I am really hoping to get a place on the Prudential Ride London 100 again, but may take a charity place and I am also planning a trip to the south of Spain to ride the Sierra Nevada mountain range – my dream of riding the Haute Route in 2017 has been put on hold due to finances.
At the start of the year I decided that I didn’t want to set some kind of unattainable New Years Resolutions. I didn’t want to stop doing anything or cut anything out only to set myself up for failure. Instead what I decided was that by the end of this year, 2016, I wanted to be in a position to sign up for the Haute Route in 2017.
It is now the end of the 3rd month of this year and I currently feel like shit.
That whole thing about not setting myself up for failure seems to have come true, probably some time around the start of this month.
January for me went well, I posted bigger numbers than I had previously. I was training at least 3 times/week. Two turbo sessions and at least once out on the road with a club run. At the time of writing this post, Strava is telling me that my last activity (yes I’ve been running too) was 25 days ago.
Here are my goals for this year:
225 hrs (including turbo sessions)
4,750 km (including turbo sessions)
3,500 m/month climbing on average
Complete the London Surrey 100 in under 6 hours
So far at the end of month 3 I have completed the following:
45 hrs – below target
1,149 km – just below target
2,930 m/month average – below target
My longest ride so far this year has been just over 100 km. I’ve completed 2 100 km+ rides which is pretty good for this time of year in my opinion. However, I have not trained anywhere near the volume I wanted to be training.
I have been facing a heavy workload as well as taking on tutoring after work during the week which has severely limited my time. Not only that but the last two weeks I’ve been struck down by the most horrendous illness. I don’t know if it is flu as a I refuse to go to the doctor and I don’t like to exaggerate my illness (Yes, I’m a man and am sometimes prone to bouts of “man-flu” but this is something far worse).
I know that I need to get back on track with my evening turbo sessions and also getting out at the weekends but it is increasingly difficult with being a teacher.
I hope that the two week Easter break will give me enough time to rest and fully recover and go back into April with a new found energy to smash my goals for the last 9 months of this year.
One thing I can be pleased with is my weight loss. I started off the year, following quite an enjoyable Christmas period weighing in at 12.5 st (79 kg) and now weigh 12 st (76 kg). Not a huge loss but I am aiming to get down to 11.5 st (73 kg) so I don’t have far to go.
I would love to hear from any other teachers who count cycling as their main hobby outside of the classroom and hear how they cope with the challenge of balancing working, training and a life.
Its a strange sport that sees you relish the chance to be out for two or three hours soaked through to the bone, face covered in mud, legs covered in road crap, feet wrinkled and bike needing a wash.
As I left the bike in the garage and saw the sun begin to appear from behind the clouds I was happy that I’d chosen the morning to ride rather than the sunny afternoon. Cycling in poor weather for me is what cycling is all about. I personally think that cyclists also look better with a waterproof jacket on, and we all know that half of cycling is looking good.
I was really struggling to motivate myself to carry on cycling following on from finishing the Tour of the South East. Waking up on Sunday morning and knowing I had to put my waterproof on before I’d even left the house wasn’t really filling me with joy but I hadn’t seen my club mates for a few weeks and knew I had to go for it.
During the week I had happened upon the new video from Strava “Ride with Us.” It made me realise why I ride. I ride because I love riding my bike, simple.
I keep on telling myself that I need something to aim for. I need a goal to motivate myself to keep riding my bike. What this video helped me to realise was that actually I don’t need an event to aim for. What I need to do is remember why I ride my bike, why I spend so much money on bikes and clothes and food.
Sunday morning riding in the rain, being hit by road spray, and finishing the ride looking somewhere close to but not quite like I’d been riding the wet cobbles of Belgium, made me realise just how much I love to ride my bike.
Being a teacher I get quite some time off in the summer (yes, I do deserve it before you start shouting) and I plan to use it productively. Last summer when I was a trainee teacher I had quite good form going into the summer months. My average speeds over the same routes were up last year and I also weighed a couple of pounds less. I am determined to make the most of the break not only on shedding some more weight and getting a bit faster but also on cultivating my tan lines (rule #7). I am even considering taking my club kit on holiday to wear in the sun for the first few days just to keep those lines on my arms and legs as sharp as possible.
What other sport sees you push yourself to the limit in climbing a hill, which you have gone out of your way to ride over, to then go down that hill as fast as you can before looking for another hill?
What other sport has your legs screaming (there are times when I think my legs have actually emitted a sound in defiance of continued riding) before then riding some more, possibly over another hill?
When else is it acceptable to wear sunglasses when it is pouring with rain?
What other sport forces you on to a saddle which clearly wasn’t designed for the human posterior for hours at a time?
Cycling doesn’t need an aim. Yes, it helps to have something to push yourself for, but what is most important is to not forget why most people start cycling in the first place – because we love to be outdoors, on the road, climbing hills, making your lungs burst and racing your friends.
This was the subject of one of Russell Brand’s latest editions of the Trews. Now let me start of by saying that if you hate Russell Brand then most likely you won’t like me but what I intend to do here is to challenge Russell Brand and his handy sidekick (who I also have a lot of respect for) George Monbiot.
I like Russell Brand and I like him for a number of reasons: he’s a West Ham fan, he does not hold himself up to be somebody who is infallible and readily admits his faults, he’s extraordinarily articulate, he questions the system, he challenges societal norms and he also tries to stand up for the “underdog” (New Era Estate, Fire Fighters union etc.). On the other hand he makes me bloody angry at times.
There are a number of things he says in his latest book Revolution which I see as unnecessary, bordering on racism and quite simply ignorant. This is not a time when he has made me angry but I think it necessary to question him.
Russell Brand ever so eloquently manages to describe the means by which Lord Rothermere came about his vast fortune (reportedly around £720m):
“What he brilliantly done was he came out the vagina of this lady who was married to a person whose name was also Lord Rothermere.”
There is no denying that for many people in the position of Lord Rothermere this is often the case. It is a problem that we not only as a British society but also as a global community have and also a problem that some people consider our political processes to have. For a select few, who are then able to become part of the law making process, they have not been selected or proven their ability to be good at anything but have instead been put in a position of power simply by being born to rich and powerful parents.
Now I believe that anybody with an ounce of intelligence about them can see how there are flaws within that system. Lord Rotheremere is (obviously, he owns the Daily Mail) a supporter of the Conservative Party who, by definition, believe in the idea of individual freedom and that when people work hard they will be rewarded for their hard work. No, I am also unaware of what hard work Rotheremere has done in coming to his position of influence.
At this point I am struggling to do anything but agree with Brand. I’m quite sure that the good Lord Rothermere’s mother did more hard work in forcing a child out from a hole which stretches beyond belief through the process of child birth. Rothermere owes his position of wealth and influence to his parents who owe their position to their parents and so and so forth. There is, at least in the case of the current Lord Rotheremere no form of social mobility involved in attaining wealth and influence.
What I want to do at this point is to try and highlight cases where a person of wealth or power has not simply inherited a business – regardless of whether they have then become part of that system and consequently passed on parts of their wealth to their offspring.
Lord Sugar is a well-known businessman and now TV personality, if you can call making a mockery of daft wana-be businessmen and women a TV personality. His story of rags to riches is one which is often told to aspiring entrepreneurs. He started off by selling electrical goods from the back of a van working his way up to become one of Britain’s wealthiest men. He grew up in east-London, not be confused with the trendy east-London of today, and his parents had little money and no titles with which to gain privilege. This is a man who has worked his way into being given a title and earning a place in the House of Lords.
Charlie Mullins is another example of a rags-riches story, although one which is much less well known. Mullins is the Director of plumbing firm Pimlico Plumbers – well known for the number plates on their vans. Mullins left school at the age of 15 before completing an apprenticeship in plumbing and starting the company in 1979. It is now London’s largest independent plumbing firm turning over approximately £20million.
No I am not right-wing in my views. No I do not think the current system is particularly fair. No I do not believe that individuals should hold such a disproportionate volume of wealth. And finally I neither hate nor love Russell Brand. I simply believe that everyone should be challenged and people should constantly question what they see, hear or read – especially in the mainstream media. Social mobility for the most part is a myth but this is not to say that it is non-existent.
What are we supposed to do as a society? I agree that titles and sitting in the House of Lords based on what your great-great-great grandfather did is wrong but for as long as we have private business how are we supposed to stop people handing over the reins of their multi-national company to their children? If the company then fails well who is to blame? Redistributing wealth more evenly would clearly be a start but that is not to say that people will stop helping their own children.
It is a disgrace that people can hold positions of influence because of their parent’s wealth or because of where they were educated and who they attended school with but one way it is possible to start moving away from this is to champion those people who have made a success from a standing start. Brand and Monbiot are right to highlight this issue but at the same time why are they not then saying that there are examples of self-made millionaires? I completely agree with their stance on individuals holding more wealth than a collective mass of poor but is it really wrong to celebrate the achievements of some people who have done well through the age old “myth” of social mobility?
Yes we need to start living in a more fair society but to some extent those people who have built an empire from nothing are surely examples of the lower classes, the poor, the “unprivileged” taking the matter into their own hands. No, they may not have built their wealth on a socialist agenda and they may not be sharing it amongst the lower class from where they once came but they have surely had to work bloody hard to get to their current position in life.
With some more time and a bit more research I may have found examples of people starting with nothing and spreading wealth out amongst the poor but I did not this time. If you can find any examples of this please point me in the right direction so I can highlight what some people are doing to make a difference to the life of other and sharing the wealth. Robin Hood does not count of course.