Author: Richard

All the Gear; No Idea

| Richard

Our home gym here in Ash, Surrey continues to expand: we now have a Schwinn 800IC/IC8 for my virtual cycling with FulGaz and JRNY; we have a ForceUSA G3 All-In-One Gym Set coupled with a BodyMax 145kg Barbell and Weight Set; a ProForm Cardio HIIT L6 Trainer for herself to do her stair stepping; and now we’ve just added a Bowflex BFX56 Treadmill 56/Treadmill 22 (depending upon where in the world you are {metric/imperial}).

The Bowflex BFX56 Treadmill is their top of the range model and features a fabulous 22″/56cm screen for their JRNY app to run on and the deck can have an incline from -5% to +20% gradient and also folds to save a bit of space when not in use.

So yes, there’s no excuse for us not getting fitter and leaner.

Herself – despite being a qualified personal trainer – has also enlisted the help of another personal trainer who specialises in getting bodybuilding athletes ready for competition. Yes, Alison will soon be competing in some Bikini Class bodybuilding contests in 2024. Watch this space!

The plan then will be for her to start offering personal trainer services herself with a focus on women and particularly Mums/mature women who may not feel comfortable in a full-on gym situation.

Bowflex BFX56 Treadmill Bowflex BFX56 Treadmill Bowflex BFX56 Treadmill Folded Bowflex BFX56 Treadmill ForceUSA G3 All-In-One Trainer ProForm Cardio HIIT L6 Trainer Schwinn 800IC Bike Schwinn 800IC Bike Schwinn 800IC Bike and iPad

May 2023 Stats

| Richard

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.

April 2023 Stats

| Richard

April 2023 was spent in Corralejo, Fuerteventura, so that meant lots of real-world cycling and the occasional walk or hike during photoshoots/location scouting.

One downside was an ear infection needing a visit to the Centro Salud – which is still not properly sorted – that seemed to be going around friends and family.

Still, these are the stats:

April 2023 Stats

April 2023 Stats

Activities: 28 Distance: 304.14 km Time: 18:27:44 Calories: 12,657

Moving on to weight, at the end of March I weighed 83.7kg but by the end of April I was up 1.3kg to 85kg due to family being out for 2 weeks plus my birthday meals. {sigh}

Weight a Minute! It’s My Birthday!

| Richard

61 today! Dear Lord…

I celebrated by getting back on the pushbike for the first time in a few days as there have been strong winds and storms (enough for a weather warning here in Fuerteventura) but even so it was very windy and difficult, especially as it was a Northerly wind and the coast road heading back is North.

In the past 12 months, I’ve also gone from weighing 97kg this time last year to 85kg this morning (a loss of 12kg or nearly two stones). Sadly, I’ve gained a kilo in the last week because we’ve been eating out and the cooler weather pushed us towards some different food, but I’m really pleased.

Weight graph

Weight Graph

March 2023 Stats

| Richard

As noted in last month’s stats, we moved house in early March and it took a few more days to set up the home gym before we headed back out to Corralejo.

In the meantime, we had family come over to stay, bringing with us a nice viral infection that hit Alison first and then me, affecting sleep and hence energy levels. Bloody kids!

March 2023 Stats

March 2023 Stats

Activities: 11 Distance: 185.54 km Time: 6:25:41 Calories: 6,262

In terms of weight, at the end of February I weighed 85.1kg and at the end of March I was down to 83.7kg, down by 1.4kg.

Back on the Rock

| Richard

We flew back to Fuerteventura in the early morning this week and the following day I was back on it with the cycling – real world, rather than virtual – so today I recorded the ride to show the difference in weather since the start of the year.

It’s unlisted over on YouTube:

February 2023 Stats

| Richard

Well February started out with us being out in Corralejo doing road riding. In the second week, we flew back to the UK and after a day’s break due to work commitments it was back into the pain cave and onto the Schwinn for more challenges on FulGaz until the last weeks of February when we had to pack everything up for our impending move down to Surrey.

Normal service was only resumed in mid-March, just before another trip back out to Fuerteventura.

February 2023 Stats

Activities: 26 Distance: 432.90 km Time: 18:52:47 Calories: 16,061

As for weight, it’s down 2.4kg from 87.5kg to 85.1kg at the end of Februa

The Cookaway

| Richard

So I mentioned that this mob had used The Email Bureau to send some spam to one of my work email addresses.

Having failed to find a contact email address for them, I went onto Trustpilot to leave them a review:

Spam on the Menu?

They must be struggling, because why else would they decide to employ the services of those spammers, The Email Bureau Limited, to send me spam today?

Edit: I’ve emailed them a screenshot as they denied spamming me…

Edit: they’re now whining that the spam didn’t come from them, but they still fail to mention that it was their campaign, paid for my them, presumably? If not, are they suing The Email Bureau Limited? No, I didn’t think so…

They responded:

Update – Thanks for the screenshot Richard. I’m afraid this is not directly from us and you should pick this up with The Email Bureau to get them to take your name off their mailing list. I see you’ve provided a similar review re spam email to 3 other businesses and I wonder whether you are on a mailing list that you need to get delisted from. We haven’t emailed you directly and you are not on our email database so we cannot even remove/unsubscribe you.

Best wishes
Team Cookaway
———————————————————————–

Hi Richard,

Thanks for getting in touch.

We have no record of you in our order or email systems and have not activated anything with The Email Bureau.

We have sent you a request via Trustpilot to provide further information so we can investigate your claim properly. Please do get in touch via Trustpilot or directly through our website so we can look into this matter.

For any such issues, we always appreciate if you can contact us first and allow us to respond before leaving a negative review especially when we have no record of any prior communication with you.

Many thanks
Team Cookaway

At no time do “Team Cookaway” deny that this was their marketing campaign. The closest they get is the “we haven’t emailed you directly” bollocks. No, you paid someone else to, you bunch of fuckwits!

 

October 2022 Stats

| Richard

We flew out to our place in Fuerteventura again on Saturday 1st October and after the weekend I started back with the real-world cycling on the Monday, having decided to up the ante a tad with my distances and to make sure I was following my consultant’s orders to do at least 30 minutes a day.

I’m still pleased with the result: 331.33km this month (including walking).

October 2022 Stats

In other news, we’ve gone a bit keto with our diets and the results are promising: I weighed 93.3kg on the Garmin Index S2 scales we have here at the start of the month and today I weigh 91kg (up 0.5kg from yesterday morning, which was a new low since the crash and muscle-wasting in July 2019).