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
I’ve been monitoring my weight – albeit somewhat loosely at times – with Garmin Connect since 26 August 2011 (apparently) when my weight was 93.3kg (14st 10lbs) and I was starting out on my fitness journey.
After getting off to a good start thanks to running and then adding some cycling, my weight fell to 85.1kg (13st 6lbs) by the end of January 2012, but began to rise gradually into 2014, falling back again in 2015 with a low of 84.1kg (14st 3lbs) before we went off to Hong Kong, Vietnam and Ko Samui. 2015 was also when we ran the Berlin Marathon.
My weight then gradually rose – with a big dip in the summer of 2018 for our wedding – until late June 2019 when it hit 95.4kg (15st). And then the crash happened… A month laying in bed eating pureed food meant that my leg muscles atrophied so by the time I weighed myself in August 2019, my weight had fallen to 85.8kg (13st 7lbs).
Bride & Groom
The aftermath of the crash affecting my mobility and exercise capability coupled with our love of eating well and lots of travel – for work and pleasure – meant that one more my weight gradually increased, peaking at 99.3kg (15st 9lbs) in October 2021.
It stayed pretty constant after that until last summer when my knee was becoming particular painful with the necrosis that had been diagnosed back in 2012. That had affected my ability to run, so I saw my consultant privately again and he encouraged me to do more cycling (also referring me to a sports physiotherapist who’s excellent) and to lose some weight, possibly trying some fasting or kept dieting. That led to the purchase of a fixed cycle and that explains the manic cycling, both indoor and in the real world since.
So since August 2022’s high of 98.2kg (15st 6lb), trying to limit my carbohydrates and this exercise (with some riding challenges to keep things interesting), I today hit 85.3kg (13st 6lbs), so that’s two stones lost since August and my second target of 85kg in sight (about 1lb to go). Once I hit that, the next target is likely to be 80kg, or roughly 12½ stone.
Another month flies by! We’ve spent all of January 2023 out in Corralejo, Fuerteventura, which means that all my exercise has been outdoor. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the weather has actually felt really wintry – for Fuerteventura, anyway! – with strong winds, cloudy conditions and the occasional bit of rain, even!
On the days it’s been too windy to cycle, I’ve tried to walk. So here are the stats from Garmin Connect:
As for my weight, this morning it’s 87.5kg after a really bad weekend for eating out (and drinking) but at least it’s still down by 0.8kg from the end of December when my weight was 88.3kg.
Here’s a little video of today’s ride. I’m actually wearing a new cycle helmet after I got stopped yesterday by the Guardia Civil for not wearing a helmet on rural roads:
After a comfy limo dash in the morning we were soon enjoying champagne and plant-based curries before our flight in the British Airways B gate lounge at Heathrow Terminal 5.
Cheers!
A short while later, we were on the plane and just as I’d got everything in its place (and a place for everything), Alison demanded we swop seats. Citizen’s Divorce already enacted. And I wondered where all my demons should go…
Demons!
Cheers (again)!
Once we landed at San Francisco it was off to collect our pre-booked car from Hertz. An absolute nightmare it was too with Hertz, ?who didn’t have our car when we arrived. After an hour’s arguing with them, they palmed a Florida-registered 5.0L V8 Mustang convertible off on us instead of the Camaro SS Convertible we’d ordered and indeed emailed about earlier that week.
Once we eventually got to the Riu Plaza Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, it was time for a gin and kebab as it was 5am UK time.
British Airways were being a nightmare before we were due to fly: despite booking our Business Class flights many months earlier, a month before flying, BA emailed us to tell us they’d cancelled our flights from London Heathrow to San Francisco.
When we’d been trying to fly out to Corralejo to move into our place out there in 2020 and 2021, the UK and Spanish governments had been opening up and locking down and easyJet were cancelling flights, so I’d become adept at moving flights and amending travel arrangements, so I was straight back online to look at alternatives, finding that BA had flights later the same day. Not ideal, but beggars can’t be choosers. I changed the car reservation with Hertz, the limousine booking with Addison Lee and sat back to make sure our COVID-19 PCR test bookings would also still work.
Later the same day, British Airways then cancelled our return flights from San Diego to London. This was more of an issue, because it meant I had to extend the car hire and the hotel. The first would not work, and the hotel? Not so much as it was fully booked, so we decided to leave the car hire as it was and book ourselves into a hotel near the airport for the extra night to suit our flights home a day later. Thankfully BA ended up paying for the hotel as compensation for the flight delay.
Well most of December 2022 was spent on the Schwinn doing FulGaz challenges but we flew out to Fuerteventura at oh-dark-hundred hours yesterday and today I finished off the year with a real-life 15km road ride on the MTB. So here’s December’s stats showing the 650km overall distance:
As for my weight, well it’s too late to measure like for like today because I’ve had coffee, freshly-squeezed orange juice and croissants out in the garden this morning, but yesterday’s weight was 88.3kg. That’s down by 9.6kg (21.2lbs or 1½ stone) from New Year’s Day 2022 when my weight was 97.9kg. That’ll do, pig!
Well thanks to that utter shitshow that is Brexit, we had to fly back to the UK mid-November so as not to outstay our welcome in the EU.
This meant that there was a switch from the longer real-world rides I was doing on a relatively heavy mountain bike back to indoor cycling on the Schwinn, so it was back to using FulGaz again. I’ve mentioned I decided – very rashly – to do their “LEJOG Challenge“, so the mileage (and time in our gym) has risen a tad…
This month’s total therefore is up to 554.59km.
My weight at the start of the month was 91kg and at the end it had surpassed my first goal and stood at 88.9kg. This is down from 98.2kg as recently as mid-August (1 stone 4lbs weight loss).
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