I can’t believe I did that…

Yesterday was quite an emotional day for me. Every year, there’s a Bank van de Post Cycling Tour, which is a series of organised events for the amateur cyclist. There’s about 11 events every year, spread all over Belgium, where you can enlist yourself and join in. The idea is that you can choose between 3 (or in some cases, 4) distances and the entire track will be full with arrows which show you the way to go. There’s even police officers standing at important crossings to ensure safety. Furthermore, there’s as well points on the track where you can rest and stock up on food and drinks. So basically, it’s the advanced version of the Ronde van Leuven which I joined last year.

I made a point to myself that I wanted to join at least one of these events this year. Yesterday was the Ename Classic, which is the very first one of this season, and I decided to go for it. I subscribed a few weeks ago to further force myself to join, and was quite nervous beforehand. I looked up all the listed climbs on Google Maps, looked at them via Google Streetview and wanted to have a very good idea of what was laying ahead of me. I had chosen for the 80km track of the Ename Classic, containing 5 registered hills (including one of 800 meters with a maximum of 14%). Since the furthest I had ever driven on 1 go was about 45 kilometers on rather flat roads, I guess you can understand why I was not too hopeful on succeeding.

I prepared a bit for the event last week on two occasions. First of all, last sunday, I went on a bike ride to try to see how well I would be able to handle doing 80 kilometers. Well, that story ended very fast. After about 17km, I was going downhill and noticed that my back wheel was starting to slip. I immediately stopped to check out what was wrong, knowing very well that I was probably having a flat one. Unfortunately, I was right. I didn’t bring anything with me to repair nor replace the tube, so I was kinda stuck. I called my fiancée but since she’s starting her driver’s license next month, she couldn’t do much to help me. But I was lucky: a friendly guy who was watering his flowers outside, noticed me and asked if he could help. That help turned into him fixing my flat tire completely, while explaining me how to do it. I didn’t have too much of an idea about it at that point, since I had never done it before. We noticed a small nail stuck into the tire, which I probably picked up on a street where works were going on. So with his wonderful help, I was able to drive home again. The day after, I went to the bike store to buy new tubes and replaced the repaired one myself. This way, I had done it myself one time as well and it’s anyway better to drive with a normal tube instead of a repaired one. Never know, right?

The second thing I did to prepare was driving to work by bike. Nothing special you might think, since I’ve done that before already. But this time, I did it with a plan: try to do it while getting the least tired as possible. I wanted to force myself to drive on a heartbeat of around 125-130BPM, since I was going to have to do that during the Ename Classic. No use in driving too fast on the flat pieces and having to do the hills on foot, right? I succeeded on my plan and decided on the way back home to still drive around a bit in Leuven, to try out some of the hills we have here. And that went quite well. So all in all, I did about 72km that day with quite some hills at the end. Ok, there was about 8 hours of work in the middle, but at least it gave me a bit more confidence for the event.

So, yesterday was the big day. I was all nervous and couldn’t sleep well during the night, but I felt actually quite OK in the morning. The preparation I had during the last week gave me the needed confidence, even though I couldn’t even handle drinking a full glass of water in the morning. Yes, I was that nervous. But on the way to the event, the nerves started kicking in. I had about 20 minutes to drive still before I would arrive, but I already saw lots of cars with race bikes attached. I knew already a lot of people would join this event, but seeing it like this made me nervous. So much so, that when I arrived at the spot, I was even a bit scared to get prepared. Most of the guys I saw first got ready with their bike to go and pick up their stuff at the start, but I did it by foot, wearing a normal jacket and jeans. I just felt like I didn’t fit in. Ok, I lost about 23 kilo since I started driving bike, but I’m still quite a big guy. And all of these guys looked very well-trained. I felt a bit like the little fat kid at the local sportsclass.

So I picked everything up at the start and went back to my car to get ready. Luckily, that particular parking lot was already a lot more quiet by then, so I could get ready in peace and quietness. I attached my personal number to my steering wheel and went for it.

It didn’t take me long before I started to really enjoy the ride. Since a total of 5500 cycling enthusiasts entered this event, it’s needless to say that you’re never really alone on the road. So at times, I really felt like driving in a peloton. A peloton which was speeding past me, but hey! I learned a few valuable lessons during the ride. First of all, I didn’t fit in with most of these guys, but I wasn’t the total freak either. At some point, I even passed a guy who was standing outside of a bakery, eating a boule de Berlin. Ok, it was a funny sight, but I still have a lot of respect for the guy. Second, I learned to control my speed and heartbeat. The first climb went actually pretty good, but was a rather short one as well. Still, I didn’t have any issues getting over it, so I was happy. But about 1 kilometer further was another part which went uphill, which was a lot harder than the actual register hill. So I kinda cursed at that point, but hey, so be it. 🙂 But the most remarkable thing I saw there, was that I drove way too fast for my own good. Uphill parts were for me usually suffering to no end, trying to reach the top before I drop dead on my bike. This is the only way I knew how to do it, since I figured there’s no way I can do that stuff while still feeling remotely OK. Boy, was I wrong. During the entire ride, I got passed by big groups of guys driving a lot faster than me. But on that particular piece uphill, I suddenly started catching up again. And then I figured: wait. This isn’t right. If these guys drive so much faster than me on flat pieces, why the hell am I catching up with them on uphill pieces? It’s not like I have a better training, let alone a better condition than them. And then I looked at my speed and noticed I was actually going faster than on flat pieces. Right. That explains. So, I hit the gears and put them lower a notch or two. And that worked so much better. I was still very high in heartbeat and still suffering, but it was controlled. I didn’t have the feeling like I had to finish that part fast or I would drop dead.

Having learned this, I repeated this on every other uphill parts, and even managed to pass a guy or 2 on very steep passages (of about 14%). I’m not gonna brag here or anything, but I still felt very good. Just on the very last climb of the day, I had to get off the bike. After 68km, there was a piece of 9% at the end of a 1km hill (with an average of 4%) and the road was full with people standing at the side, not able to make it to the top. Ok, most guys still rode to the top, some even while sprinting, but when you’re suffering that much on the bike and your legs really don’t like your attitude towards them anymore, you take the safe way out. About 50m before the top, I clicked out of my pedals and stopped. I was afraid I would not make it to the top, not have the time nor force anymore to click out of my pedals and would lay their like an idiot on the road. I already didn’t really feel like fitting in, laying spread-eagled a few meters before the top wouldn’t have really helped that.

But, apart from that short forced-stop, I made it to the finish! And I can tell you, the feeling I had when I noticed I was getting close to the finish… I just can’t describe it. I was fighting on my bike to not tear up on the last kilometer, trying hard to not get too emotional. But it was hard. I mean, a year ago, I was doing 1-2 visits per week to a chiropractor for getting my knees fixed, half the time I couldn’t even walk decently cause of my knees, I weighted about 23 kilo more than I do now. And then finishing such an event, driving 80km through the so-called ‘Vlaamse Ardennen’ with that kind of hills in between. I couldn’t believe it. I must’ve still cried about 3-4 times that day, just cause I was so emotional and happy. And proud of myself. I managed it. Who would’ve known a year ago?

-20! Hupsa!

I finally made it. Minus 20. It feels good!

If you have no idea what I’m talking about (and you probably don’t), I’ve reached the mental border of losing 20 kilo’s in total. And while I still have quite a way to go, I put this up as a first big goal for myself. And the rewards for achieving this? Here it is:

I know this doesn’t really fit as food to celebrate losing weight, but it was definitely worth it! Besides, I’m doing this based mainly on sports anyway and not on some crazy diet. So this is definitely not too bad. 🙂

I have decided as well that from now on, I’ll put my real weight on the side of this blog too. I’m still definitely not proud of it, but I feel like it’s time. But don’t judge me, I’m doing my best to change it. 🙂

PS: oh yeah, next goal? Not sure, I’m putting up goals per 5 kilo now (so 25, 30, 35, …) but the next really big goal is getting below a BMI of 30. Which is still around 20 kilo to go. But I’m doing my best! 🙂

Winter isn’t that bad…

… to it actually feels more like autumn. I mean, its january, we haven’t had any snow so far, it’s not even been really THAT cold. Quite frankly, it took a while as well before the autumn feeling really kicked in.

So, I decided to make use of such weather conditions, packed myself in nicely with my winter clothes, and went for it. And here’s how it looked:

It went awesome. I nearly froze my fingers and feet off at start, but after a while that was OK too. The only problem I had occurred at the start: last time I got my wheel off the bike, I put it back in the other way around. So the magnet for measuring my speed etc was on the wrong side. So I was standing there like an idiot at the side of the road, getting my wheel off, turning it around and putting it back in. I’m not so used to that yet, so it didn’t go as smooth as it goes with the guys on TV.

But, seeing the sunshine, all that couldn’t ruin my mood. Not to mention it had been quite a while since I did my typical tour around Bertem. And I noticed a difference. A big difference. All the work in the gym and on the Tacx at home must really be paying off, since the uphill parts went a lot better than before. Not that I flew over them, but it went a lot smoother. Of course after a while I overdid myself and still got exhausted, but hey, that’s a nice feeling of exhaustion anyway!

I love this kind of winter.

Above average condition? Me? What?!

I like winter. There’s no road cycling going on, it’s cold outside, driving to work with the bike is way too dangerous. But I still like it. I don’t know if it’s because it’s the Christmas period and I simply love Christmas, or because I just love it when it’s so cold outside even though the sun is shining. It has its own special feeling. Don’t get me wrong, soon I’ll be happy when it’s over again and I see the first signs of spring incoming around march. But right now, I’m enjoying the most wonderful time of the year (pun intended).

But nonetheless, I’ve been trying to keep up my fitness by doing some work on the Tacx at home, going to the fitness and going swimming. I’ve worked out a schedule for myself which is the following:

• MONDAY: rest day
• TUESDAY: intervaltraining on the Tacx at home (usually intensive interval training by doing a 2’/4′ interval at a max of 250W)
• WEDNESDAY: fitness
• THURSDAY: again intervaltraining on the Tacx at home
• FRIDAY: fitness
• SATURDAY: swimming
• SUNDAY: fitness

I’m not gonna claim this works out every week. Heck, it hasn’t worked out 1 time so far, but it’s a goal I put up for myself and when I reach about 5/7 I’m already happy. I have quite a busy life, so I usually can’t afford to go do sports 6 times a week. However, going to the fitness has the biggest priority, so we always go at least 2 times a week to the fitness, most often even 3.

So, me and my girlfriend fiancee have been going to the fitness studio for about 5 weeks by now and I really love it. We’re going to the university fitness since my girlfriend is doing her PhD there, which means we get it a lot cheaper. Good quality gym, with trainer and training schedule, for a shitload cheaper than what most people pay for a fitness. So you can imagine how much we like it there. :p

So last Wednesday we had a new appointment with our trainer. The first 4 weeks we got a basic fitness schedule which we had to follow, which was basically made up out of:

• 15′ warmup at a heartbeat of 138 BPM
• 10 strength exercises (including chest press, leg press, pulldown, situps, hip abduction/adduction, …)
• at least 45 minutes of cardio on either a normal bike, recumbent bike or a crosstrainer

Needless to say I do both my warmup and cardio on a normal bike, since I don’t like the other two. For the cardio I always did intervaltraining, trying out the several options of the biketrainer and such.

But, since last Wednesday we got a new schedule based on our current progress. The warmup has been shortened to 10 minutes, we got new strength exercises and our own personal handmade cardio training workout. Especially this last thing is very cool, since we just need to plug-in a small key into the trainer and the rest will be done for us.

What surprised me the most though, was the condition test. This was pretty much a simple test to see how my current condition is. Slowly build up heart rate to 126BPM, hold that for a while, build up to 146, hold that for a while, done. Average time of test: 15 minutes (according to the trainer). My test lasted about 16 minutes, which is apparently already a good sign. And after loading up the results on the computer, this was clear as well. My score was defined as ‘good’. The trainer immediately added that, since this was my first test, such a score is actually very good. Not to mention the fact that my VO2 index (which is atm 41.5) is above average for my age. My age. 26. On a university gym. No weight included in the average. Just age. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Me, an above average condition for my age? You must be kidding me!

But, he wasn’t kidding. Apparently all my work from the past few months is definitely paying off. Not just in sense of weight loss, but as well in sense of condition. You have no idea on how high of a cloud I was after that. That feeling… I’ll never forget.

Autumn is actually not THAT bad

When I bought the Tacx I figured I wouldn’t be taking my bike outside anymore for like half a year. Well, that only took a few weeks. The weather outside was cold, but sunny. There hasn’t been that much rain over the past few weeks and it already feels a bit like winter. Clear sky full of stars in the morning, cars with frozen windows whose drivers I can mock since mine is in the garage, frost-free. Needless to say, I started thinking that this kind of weather actually doesn’t suggest that I should leave the bike at home.

So I manned up, bought some winter clothes for on the bike, together with some lights, and off I went. I left at 6 AM at home, completely in the dark and drove to work. And I loved it. I loved to be on the bike again. I loved it to be driving alone in the dark, with only the stars in the sky looking upon me. It felt great. And I didn’t even feel that cold even though it was 4 degrees Celsius out there. The clothes helped a lot and made it very comfortable to drive in that weather.

Unfortunately, riding in the dark has as well the disadvantage of not seeing clearly where you’re driving, so I drove through a hole in the street. At first I thought it was fine, but when I arrived at work, I noticed one of my spokes on my rear wheel broke. Luckily, I managed to still attach it somehow between two other spokes so I could drive home by bike again in the evening.

Another thing was that this was the first time I drove with new pedals, the kind you have to click in. I really liked to drive with these, since they keep my foot always at the same spot, but of course the disadvantage is that you’re clicked into your pedals. You need to make a special movement to get out of them again. Most people will always say that you have to fall a few times with your bike before you get the hang of them. Luckily, I didn’t fall so far, even though I came very close a few times. And there’s not a lot of things more embarrassing than standing still at a red light in the middle of a city, surrounded by a lot of cars, and suddenly falling to the side. But as I said, that didn’t happen, so that was good.

Anyway, soon it’s definitely not going to be safe anymore to drive to work by bike, especially when it starts to freeze, but at least I still got outside again with my bike.

Go with the Flow!

I hate Belgian weather. Seriously, it sucks. The entire summer was crap, and the few days which still contain sunshine these days, still get some showers of rain during the day. So I decided I better get prepared for bad weather and winter already. After doing some decent thinking and reading a lot of reviews, I decided to go for the Tacx Flow T1680.

I got lucky as well, cause there’s a new Tacx Flow which appeared this year (the T2200) and cause of that, the older version became a lot cheaper. So I got a pretty good deal on the T1680! I bought the Flow at Futurumshop in Holland and just 2 days after it was already standing in my living room. So pretty good service on that one!

Now, I told you already that I read quite some reviews, and quite a lot of them said the installation is really easy. One blog writer even said it just took him about 10 minutes to install. Well, either he was used to installing this kind of stuff or I just really suck at it, cause it did take me a good 1.5 hours to install my Flow. I found the manual to be pretty minimalistic when it came to the installation of the product and that really didn’t help. Installing the brake took me the longest actually, but all in all it still went pretty OK in the end. At least, that’s until I made it to the end of the manual and then saw a few side notes, stating what you have to do different when you have a rather small or big wheel size. And guess what? I’m 1m90, so I obviously had a bigger wheel than average… So that resulted in the fact that I had to use extra parts to install the brake, so I could take the entire installation apart again and start anew. But at least now I really know how to install this thing. 🙂

Luckily, the installation is not something you’re supposed to do every day, so I’d prefer that to be the really uncomfortable part compared to actually using it. And I can safely say that the Flow is a great investment. I’ve tried it out 3 times by now, with 3 different training methods and it was really a lot of fun already.

The first day I got the Flow, I didn’t do anything really anymore, since it was already pretty late, so I went to bed for work the day after. But on the day after, I tried out my first training on the Flow, by doing an extensive interval training. A bit more information on this kind of training:

The extensive interval training constitutes the intermittent variation of exertion and active recovery periods within a training unit. Characteristics of the extensive interval method are medium or large exertion periods within the basic endurance range or within the strength endurance range with the duration of the recovery periods being half as long as those of the exertion periods. It is important to note that the recovery periods must not result in full recovery.

I read as well that it’s important that you try to do the exertion periods 7 times in a row. Once these periods become comfortable to you, you should increase the difficulty rather than increasing the number of periods. So after a warmup of 5 minutes, I tried out exertion periods at 250 watt, with active recovery periods at 120 watt. These are numbers I read a few times on blogs, so I decided to give those a try. And I think those were pretty good numbers for me. I managed to do all 7, but I was quite exhausted at the end. I did the last one at 300 watt as well just to give it a try, and I felt already that this was too hard to do 7 times. Perhaps next time I’ll try out 260 watt for the extensive interval training.

The next training I did was a duration training. After a 10 mins warmup at 100+ RPM on an easy gear, I did 50 minutes on a heartbeat of around 160 BPM, which gave me an average speed of 28km/h. At times my heartbeat would go higher to over 170BPM, which I corrected by toning down gear and speed for a bit, until I dropped below 160 so I could pick up the speed again. And this worked out pretty good as well. According to my report afterwards, this ride was worth just as much as driving one way to work, so I was very happy with that.

And the last training I did was yesterday, which was an intensive interval training. A bit more info:

High-intensity interval training (HIIT) or sprint interval training is an exercise strategy that is intended to improve performance with short training sessions. HIIT is a form of cardiovascular exercise which is beneficial to burning fat in a short and intense workout. Usual HIIT sessions may vary from 9–20 minutes. The original protocol set a 2:1 ratio for recovery to work periods. For example, a runner would alternate 30–40 seconds of jogging or walking with 15–20 seconds of hard sprinting. A HIIT session consists of a warm up period of exercise, followed by six to ten repetitions of high intensity exercise, separated by medium intensity exercise, and ending with a period of cool down exercise. The high intensity exercise should be done at near maximum intensity. The medium exercise should be about 50% intensity. The number of repetitions and length of each depends on the exercise. The goal is to do at least six cycles, and to have the entire HIIT session last at least fifteen minutes and not more than twenty.

So basically, the big difference to an extensive interval training is that instead of having a 1:05 exertion/rest interval, you get a 1:2 interval, combined with the fact that the exertion period is supposed to be near maximum in this training. So you’re supposed to go harder compared to an extensive interval training, but you get longer periods to rest as well. I tried out the same values as my extensive interval training, meaning 120 watt for rest and 250 watt for exertion, but I changed the timing on both to 2 minutes of exertion and 4 minutes of rest. I started with a warmup of 10 minutes at 100+ RPM on an easy gear, after which I did the first interval. I noticed immediately that this training was going to be quite a bit harder. The difference between doing 1 minute and 2 minutes at 250 watt is quite big. My heart rate went up to about 180 BPM, which is really exhausting for me and I couldn’t keep up the 120 watt either in the rest period. I switched that to 110 watt at first, but a few periods later, this was already down to 80 watt. Intervals 2 and 3 became worse to keep it up and at the end of the 4th interval, I couldn’t continue anymore. I got off the bike, tried to control my breath and went to shower. I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t make it to the end, but on the other hand, that’s what interval trainings are about aren’t they. I’m not sure yet if I’ll lower my watt for exertion to 240 or even 230 next time, or if I’ll just try to make it to 5 intervals. Either choice isn’t a bad one I think, but I’m not sure yet which one I’ll do.

So that’s the 3 different trainings I’ve done on the Flow so far, and I’ve decided to throw those three into a training program. Tuesday will be an intensive interval training, Thursday an extensive interval training and saturday is for the duration training. This fits well with the fact that if saturday weather isn’t too bad, I can do the duration training outside instead of on the Flow.

So that concludes my first report on training on my Tacx Flow. I’m really happy I bought this and I’m sure if I keep it up during wintertime, I’ll notice the efforts next year when winter is done.

Ronde van Leuven

I decided to join an organised tour for families and amateur cyclists around Leuven. Since I started riding bike, I figured this would be a great thing to do, since you don’t have to worry about how to drive or where to drive, you get to new places to see and there’s a lot of people around you. I saw a sign for the Ronde van Leuven every time I came home from work, since they (strategically) posted a big sign next to the cycling road for it. And every single time, it screamed ‘JOIN!’ at me. So I decided to go for it.

The Ronde van Leuven had 3 kinds of tracks: 3 small tours of 25km, two medium ones of 40km and one big one of 63km. I figured the 63km was a bit too big for me still. Leuven is not really the most flat part of Flanders (not that it’s a village in the Alps ofc) and I was scared of it. I’m not gonna hide it, I was scared to do the big 63km one, so I decided to go for one of the 40km ones.

And it went pretty good. There was a point after about 10km where I thought of just driving home cause I was feeling so sick, but I bit through, kept going and finished it. I guess I just went too hard with too less food in the morning. Steep climbs are still a pain for me, which is probably not surprising seeing my weight and my knee issues. And the point where I was feeling so bad was after a part with a few very steep parts, so that was actually not really surprising. I did the same part again a few days later by car just to go check how bad it actually was, and I was surprised I even made it up. Again, I’m not saying it was such an insane hill, but for me, it was already pretty hard to do.

The rest of the track was relatively flat, so that went better, even though I got a few times some hard painshots in my right knee. It happened like 3 times, not too far away from each other, so I decided to ignore it and hope for the best. And that paid off. I completed the 40km in about 2 hours (including stops to get stamps in intermediate points) and was very happy with myself. I met some nice people on the way as well, I saw some new parts around the city I live in which I hadn’t seen before, and learned some new ways to drive by bike for next times.

It’s like I’ve always said: riding bike is the best way to get to know your neighbourhood. Running just doesn’t bring you far enough, and by car you just pass everything way too fast.

PS: the combination of Ronde van Leuven + driving to work the week after by bike on friday made me lose 3.2 kilo in one week. Crazy right? But not healthy either, I guess it was a lot of lost water as well. But hey, I’m not complaining!

I hate my knees, can I have new ones?

My knees are acting up again. Those bitches. I told them to shut up and leave me alone, but that didn’t help apparently. It kept em quiet for a while, but they started to whine again recently.

I’ve had knee issues since I was a kid. At the age of around 12, my right knee was often giving issues when I would sit too long in a space where stretching isn’t possible. For example on a bus or in a theater, I could guarantee you that my right knee would start to hurt like shit after while. Back then I blamed it on so-called ‘growth pains’. But well, I’m 26 by now (actually since last saturday) and I doubt I’m still growing. I’m already 1m90 anyway, so I don’t need much growing anymore. But my knee still acts up like it used to, and on top of that, my left knee decided some months (or years even) ago to join its counterpart in a mutual source of pain. At some point, I wasn’t even able anymore to walk really, so I figured it was time to have them checked out. According to my doctor, I have issues with muscles that are too short, causing knee issues. So I went for a while to a physiotherapist. Even though that didn’t fix my knee issues completely, the practices I got there did help, and my knees improved. Basically, my physiotherapist made me do some exercises such as riding bike and bending through my knees while hanging on to a weight. On top of that, she did some stretching as well which was quite painful (especially the first time) but productive.

After I was done with the physiotherapist appointments, the whole cycling thing started (whether or not the knees had any influence on this story I’ll leave in the middle) and my knees got a lot better. Heck, I didn’t even feel any sort of pain in them for at least 2 months. But I guess I cheered too fast. I thought that going for bike rides that often and doing a lot more sports than I used to, would fix my knee issues. Not to mention the weight loss! I mean, that would have to help, no? I guess I was wrong.

Around 2 weeks ago, I started to feel pain in my knee again. Coincidence or not, it started around the same time I spent some more time in front of my computer instead of in the living room in the couch watching TV. Is it my desk chair? Is it the fact that I don’t have enough room for my legs at my desk? Is it because I’m sitting wrong on my chair? Or is it just a coincidence? I have no idea, though I’m guessing it would be a bit too much of a coincidence. I like to believe that by changing position on my desk chair, I can get away again from pain in my knees.

An extra issue is the fact that it’s just my left knee acting up, which is the one that used to be OK until a few months ago. So it’s not even the knee I would call the ‘weak one’. No, my right knee nearly never plays up, unless when I’m riding bike… Sigh. Yup, when I’m riding bike, my left knee is somehow OK, but my right knee starts to be a bitch. Not really while driving, but when I start going uphill or not to stand on my pedals, it starts to hurt. And sometimes even quite a bit. I can bite through the pain, but that’s not supposed to be how it goes. The bike riding should improve my knee pain, not make it worse. So at the moment, I’m not quite sure what to do about it. I have the feeling they’re getting better again now that I’m staying away from my computer at home a bit more again and since I changed my position on my desk chair. So I guess I’ll have to wait and see, but if it doesn’t get better, I’m gonna have to go back to the doctor. And this time, I’m not buying the muscle stuff anymore. This has to be something else. And I’ll find out what, cause if there’s something that I’m not gonna let happen, it’s letting this bullshit ruin my dreams. No way José!

Weather improving, fitness started

It’s about friggin’ time. After a pretty crappy month of July, august didn’t really start better either. But since last week, the tables are turning and we’re at least getting a bit of summertime. Unfortunately it’s already nearly end of august, but since I haven’t been going to school anymore since ages, the feeling of the first of september is not that bad for me, really. But still, I’m happy with the good weather and I’ve been using it to my advantage as well.

Last week was a pretty darn good week. It started out with a good workout on the hometrainer on saturday, about 1 hour-long and a total of 26km. On sunday my girlfriend and I went swimming and monday morning I did a good 20 minutes on the hometrainer before leaving to work. Tuesday I did another good 40 minutes on the hometrainer while my girlfriend was preparing food after work, and on wednesday I drove to work by bike. And it was a good ride too. My average speed is going up, which I like, and I felt really good on the bike too. Only the evening ride back was a bit harder, since it was quite windy. The sun was shining, which I liked, but as soon as I arrived back in Leuven, I got a full frontal headwind, which felt like a continuous punch in the face. After that, I was done. I still got home in a good way and everything, but my legs were really not happy with me. That was a shame, since I was doing a good ride, but can’t have it all I guess. 🙂

I took a small break from sports the next days, since my Polar trainer on the Polar website told me that I went heavily into red, and training wasn’t recommended. But it was still a good week, and that showed on saturday. I got up early in the morning (well…. ‘early’) and decided to go weight myself. And BOOM, another 1.9 kilo lost baby! I was really happy with that, and that gave me some good motivation too. I didn’t do any sort of sports that day, since it was really raining a lot, and plus, I went to Visé to go look at the Eneco Tour. That was really a lot of fun as well. I enjoy going to bike races to watch, especially when it’s on a nice climb. The Eneco Tour was passing 2 times on the Hallembaye climb, which was rather special. The Hallembaye brings up good memories from 1999, when I was standing on that same climb, waiting for the Amstel Gold Race to pass. And I still remember that day, since we were standing  at the spot where Lance Armstrong and Michael Boogerd decided to finish the race just the two of them. Lance later on went to win his first Tour de France, a race he would win 7 times. 7. Incredible.

The next day helped my motivation as well though! On sunday morning, I decided to try on a polo shirt which I bought like 2 years ago, but felt more like a second skin recently than anything else. Seriously, when you’re used to being of my size, you know what I’m talking about. So I tried it on, and it fit. Perfectly. Not even a slight hint of being too small. I loved it. I really, really, loved it.

So all in all a good weekend, and we decided to go swimming on sunday too, to start on a new week of a good amount of sports. I did 25 rounds (5 more than I do usually) and I did that amount as well in pretty much the same time as usual. The swimming pool showed me already that my motivation was high. 🙂

On monday, my girlfriend and I grabbed our bikes and decided to drive to Tervuren. We went to go and see the Belgian Time Trial Championship, and we figured it would be a cool idea to do by bike. And we were right. It was a really nice and cool event, super to do just the two of us. We saw the guys pass, including the new champion Philippe Gilbert and decided to do a little tour on the way back. So in the end, we had about nearly 20k done, including some nice hills, so it was a good day.

Yesterday we went for the first time to a fitness center to give it a try. We decided to try out the one from the university, since that’s a lot cheaper for my girlfriend. It’s a very nice location, it’s close to our home and it was very much fun as well. The only problem is: crowded. It’s the university fitness, which means that a lot of the students of Leuven go there. I was already surprised by the amount of people who were in there yesterday, and the guy who guided us on our first day said it’s usually about 3 times as much during the year. So that’s really a shitload of people. But, there’s of course one advantage. Belgian students have the tendency to go home during the weekend, so then it’s a lot calmer. So that is ofc still an option then. We decided to check out what the general price would be for the two of us and when that’s ok, we’ll go for it.

It was a good workout though. We started off by doing 10 minutes on a sort of recumbent bike, keeping heartbeat around 120-130. After that, we did some general strength exercises, training different muscles (I went immediately for a calf raising exercise) and afterwards finished with some more cardio training. I tried out the normal bike this time and did 15 minutes at around 150-160 BPM, doing a good 7k in that time (average speed of 30k). We had a lot of fun, and this is definitely something we want to keep up!

And as a final thing, I went to work today by bike again! So I’m hoping that’ll have a good result on weight next saturday, but even when it doesn’t, it’s still really healthy of course.

So that’s basically another update, it’s all still going great, and I’ve even started picking up on other hobbies, such as cooking and baking. I’m still in baby steps, but that’s how you start with everything, isn’t it? 🙂

Still going strong

It’s going good. I’ve lost 11.5 kilo by now in total, which is something I really like already by itself. I’m still not comfortable with sharing my current weight, so that will still have to wait about 10-20 kilo. 🙂

Furthermore, I’ve made a Google Docs spreadsheet, where I can easily calculate the average amount of weight I need to lose per week to reach a certain goal. I’ve put up for april next year (2012) but I’m doubtful if it will work. Basically I have 35 weeks to lose 32.5 kilo. That’s quite a bit obviously, so I’m gonna have to wait and see. But hey, it’s nice to put such goals up, it keeps the motivation high. 🙂

The weather has been very much crap though, so I haven’t been on the bike THAT much, though I did make two tours last week, one of 25km and one of 36km.

The 25km was actually the hardest though, since it went over unfamiliar terrain, and it was quite hilly. I have no idea about percentages, but I’m pretty sure we went over pieces  which went over 10%. I mean “we” in sense of me and my girlfriend, since she joined me on both rides. 🙂

The 36km was really nice, since we drove to the landing area of the airport of Zaventem and stayed there for a while to look at planes. Unfortunately, there weren’t too many planes landing at the time, but it was still quite nice.

I don’t have a lot of further updates at the moment, except that my bike is making noises I don’t like, so I’m gonna head to the shop soon and have that checked out. But I’m guessing it’s not going to be too much of an issue.

I’m planning on a tour to go see the ‘Vlaamse Leeuw’ in Waterloo, which is a 32km ride, one way. So that should happen soon enough, if the weather finally decides to stop bitching at me at least.