A rather odd couple quit everything to travel the world on bikes....

Cycle Training from Scratch (update Oct 2005)

It seems that many people use the tour itself to train their bodies to perfection but I'm afraid neither Shakti or I would get across the pyrennes without a bit of prior conditioning.

I'm enjoying my cycling so much now that I want to start honing my skills and direct my fitness training to improving my cycling performance. I've been reading loads of books on the subject recently and I will gradually review them and add them to the site. The Lance Armstrong Performance Program has been particularly useful and has a relevance to newcomers and performance athletes alike.

I can't claim that my cycling ability warrants such an outlay, but what the heck, I love gadgets and I love my new polar S725i cycling computer cum heart rate monitor. It records every last detail of my ever so exciting daily commute and draws all sorts of beautiful graphs for me to admire on my computer. Clearly I don't need this, but I'll enjoy letting you all know how I fathom out how to train with it.

I have started logging all my rides on BikeJournal which helps with the motivation and adds to the competitive spirit. More serious rides such as the 100 km Audax rides I have taken to joining are listed in the routes archive.

Cycling alone is not enough to shift the weight anymore so I am adding a few more training sessions to the mix. I've been jogging daily since the end of September and although I'm incredibly slow I can really feel it making a difference. In addition I have just started inline skating in Hyde Park yet another sport that I seem to flop at but this time next year - who knows? Finally, the other new activity is kickboxing with a group called kbkickboxing, who do a lot of women only martial arts training. I wonder how many sports it's possible to excel at?

More: Routes |  Training Log  |  Heart Rate Monitoring