Training is GO!
Dear God, I am unfit. Am just back from my first ride for about a year and I’m feeling totally done! I thought my general day to day activities were keeping me semi fit, but nope – I am officially a red faced puffing old lady!
At the start of the week, I got my first training plan from Phil Mack, who is going to be helping me get Touro ready. He clearly got the measure of me, because for the first few weeks, I am doing one short road ride and one turbo session, not enough to scare me off completely.
My first ride was to be for an hour…easy peasy i thought, not a problem. But the first hill? Oh dear. There was a lot of wheezing and groaning and to add to the pain, a lovely cheery man caught up with me and started chatting – just as I thought my head/legs/lungs were going to explode. Pretending i wasn’t going to collapse in a heap in front of an audience probably got me up the first hill, but i was glad when he bombed off. (sorry Glenn!).
My aim was to reach Traquair House, which is only 7.5 miles from my house, but I didn’t quite make it before my turnaround deadline was up. Just as I turned back, my friend Pam rode up on her mountain bike and we started home together…she assumed I’d be much quicker than her since I was on a road bike but to my shame, she beasted me all the way back. When I got home, I collapsed on the sofa and shovelled too many calories down to get me going again, and now i’m feeling pretty good. However, I really am shocked at how much fitness I’ve lost. A 14 mile ride before would have felt like nothing, but I did really find it a challenge today. Well, I guess the only way is up!
My next task for Phil is a forty five minute turbo session. I haven’t got my new smart turbo trainer yet, but hopefully it will come tomorrow and I can set up Zwift. I was thinking that maybe if anyone else is starting from scratch, they could join me online via Zwift and we could turbo together, which might make it more enjoyable…I’ll investigate and report back.
Anyway. Today’s lesson is that this is going to be way harder than I thought. I’m really disappointed at how much fitness I’ve lost and I’ve put on more than Christmas weight – and perhaps I have been burying my head in the sand. Time to stand up and face the fact I’m nearly 50 (eek! can’t believe I said that outloud!) and if I want to be fit and healthy, I’m going to have to work my ass off.
Lets do this!!!
More info at www.tourotheborders.com
Categorised in: Blog
This post was written by Alex Simpkin
