Happy New Year! Resolutions for 2013

At this time of year I traditionally and bravely dance out on the highwire and present my resolutions for the coming year after seeing how well I did in meeting the previous year’s.  The idea is to get motivation for the coming twelve months by setting real achievable goals.  At least I thought that’s what the aim should be since I did not do very well with my 2011 resolutions, as I pointed out here in January 2012, but in many ways 2012 was much worse.  I will blame this not only on my own laziness but also interference by life getting in the way unpleasantly from time to time.  So first the catalogue of misses:

1.   Weight down to 78 kgs as soon as possible, as in “now.”

Well this was a huge flop as not only did I fail to drop the 8-9 kgs I had planned but in fact went completely in the opposite direction and gained 7 kgs, bringing me to an insanely-high 92.6 today.  To reach my original target (actually set in 2011) I now have to get rid of 14 kgs, or 31 pounds!  This is a key resolution since I feel sluggish and tired all the time and I know that I will be hopeless riding up hills in the coming year unless I get really serious about this.  There is also the general health issue.  So, I need to stay away from beer and cake this year and work out a lot more.    

How I look (or at least feel) now

2.        Organized Rides

Well, this actually worked out quite well although I did not manage to get into l’Eroica for a second time and could not work out the logistics for the Paris-Roubaix sportif.

 

6 Hour Charity Spinning Event, Netherlands (January 28)—completed!

Amstel Gold Sportif 150 km (April 14)—completed!  And then ridden a second time a month later!

Lake Garda (1), including watching Giro d'Italia team time trial after riding course (May)--completed

Lake Garda (2) Pezcycling Camp with climb up the Stelvio (May-June)--completed

Gran Fondo Damiano Cunego, Verona, Italy 85 km (June 3)--completed

Paris-Roubaix Sportif, France 210 km (June 10)—too complicated to get organized for

2012 Lost Boys Tour of Europe: Corsica, France (June-July)--completed

L'Eroica, Chianti, Italy (September)—unable to get registered

Unexpected organized rides completed:

Gruyere Tour 88 kms in August

Romandie-Verbier Classic 100 km in September

WK Limburg Sportif  170 kms in September

Rund um die Baumberge 125 km RTF in October

So I will give myself a passing grade on this!

3.        Touring

I did manage the first part of the Limes Radweg but this was it.  I would still like to do the Xanten-Paderborn "Roman Route" and more of the Limes, but with better planning. 

4.      Doing something about learning Italian.

Well, five visits to Italy this year certainly helped! 

Now, for the 2013 Resolutions:

1. 1.       Get serious about weight loss.

1. 2.       Get serious about weight loss.

1. 3.       Get serious about weight loss.

Time to roll out the High-Intensity Training Plan again, and also crack open the Olympic Distance Training Program that I have.  Although I have no interest in doing a triathlon, switching between three disciplines is probably good for me at this point in life.  I am also going back to keeping a food diary as well as a training one.

2.       Organized Rides:

Tour du Lac Leman 180 kms May 26 in Switzerland

Ride two Radmarathon (200 km) rides in Germany

Lost Boys Annual Tour of Europe: July/August in Switzerland

Hallzig Historica in August (retro ride)

Ride two CTFs

Rhön Bicycle Weekend 18/19 May (152 km Saturday, 205 km Sunday)

At least one time trial!

3. Blog entries at least twice a week, so 104 entries instead of 2012’s sad 31.

4.  Improve riding skills, particularly descending as it was not very good in Corsica for some reason.  Well, partly due to a crash, but still...

 So that's it for 2013's resolutions.  If everything goes according to plan, I should get into the last part of the year looking more like this:

Happy New Year! Resolutons for 2012

I suddenly find myself here in 2012, regrettably unable to train due to a sinus infection for which I have been given antibiotics and orders to lie down a lot. This is clearly interfering with my ambitious training plans for the coming season, particularly sad as here in Düsseldorf we have not had anything much like a winter. There was heavy rain in December but the start of the year is quite pleasant so I hope to do something out on the road soon!

Every year I set out my resolutions for the coming year out here in public where the world can see them. My planned efforts for 2011 did not work out so well.

To recap:

1. Weight down to 78 kg by mid-June 2011. Not remotely close, so this will have to be a recycled resolution for 2012.

2. Complete my high-intensity training (HIT) program on the home trainer. Nope, didn't happen. Try again.

3. Do more writing on the blog. 61 postings for the year doesn't seem bad at all, although I still need to finish writing up the 2010 Lost Boys Tour of Europe before starting to post the 2011 one from June! Still, it is my lowest total since setting up the blog in 2007. Must Do Better.

4. Organized rides. The list is very short due mainly to the horrible weather we had this past summer. I did not make those chosen for Amstel Gold but I did ride the dreadful Bonn-Eupin-Bonn ride, along with the Berlin Velothon, several RTFs and l'Eroica. The Lost Boys trip this year did take place but the distances were short, made up for by the steepness of the roads. And I did several rides with the Klassikerausfahrtgruppe of old people on old bikes.

5. In touring rides, there were a few successes, including the Erft, the Ahr and the Sieg bike routes, the Sauerland Radring, three days of great riding in the Ardennes with my friends from Cycling Camp San Diego and three days of Münsterland riding to check out castles. Nothing multi-day, however.

Although I was pleased that the world was not destroyed on May 21, I regret that I still have made no serious effort to learn Italian.

So here we go again: Resolutions for the Coming Year

1. Get serious about training, and get the weight down fast. 78 kgs. Now.

2. Organized rides:

6 Hour Charity Spinning Event, Netherlands (January 28)

Amstel Gold Sportif 150 km (April 14)

Lake Garda (1), including watching Giro d'Italia team time trial (May)

Lake Garda (2) Pezcycling Camp with climbs up the Gavia and Stelvio (May-June)

Gran Fondo Damiano Cunego, Verona, Italy 85 km (June 3)

Paris-Roubaix Sportif, France 210 km (June 10)

2012 Lost Boys Tour of Europe: Corsica, France (June-July)

L'Eroica, Chianti, Italy (September)

3. Touring

Roman routes, including the Xanten-Paderborn route and beginning the Limesstrasse
Pfalzer-Wald weekend
Bad Driburg weekend
Critical Dirt Revisited

4. Do something about learning Italian.

So, let's see how this shapes up over the coming 12 months!

And since I cannot do anything bike-related except cleaning and polishing at the moment, I have actually been watching television. Here is a clip from a rather silly 1968 French comedy, "Les Cracks," starring a once-famous comedian named Bouvril. He portrays an inventor of a new and improved brake system who ends up in a bicycle race going from Paris to San Remo around 1900. A review of entire movie will follow on the blog, sooner or later!

My Overambitious Cycling Goals for 2011

Somehow yet another year has ended and the bright dawn of another January 1, when all things are possible, has emerged. Well, perhaps not quite a bright dawn in Düsseldorf, where the climate tends to be either rain or snow but almost always grey skies.

Looking back over 2010, I would say that it was not one of my better years. In cycling terms, with the exception of our annual Lost Boys Tour of Europe, most of my rides were not very memorable. My time trialling was genuinely terrible as I seemed to suffer from terrible congestion and/or allergies on almost every ride. I had some nice rides in Gatineau Park. I fell off my bike near Bonn. My move from Ottawa to Düsseldorf cost not only the expected one month/six weeks lost since I would have to wait for my bikes in the shipment, but in fact it turned out to be much worse as the incessant rain from my arrival in late August pretty much killed my plans and the mere 4,365 kms of riding I recorded was pretty sad compared to 2009's 6,500, not to speak of the nearly 8,000 kms I rode in 2007. And my weight has steadily climbed due to the discovery that the best baker in Düsseldorf is right across the street from my office, as well as to other stresses in my personal life.

Nonetheless, there were positive events, including acquiring new fewer than, uh, four classic steel bicycles this year and completing restoration of a fifth. I have made some new friends with whom I will be able to ride once the weather improves and there is a vast range of possibilities for riding in this region and beyond.

So, here are my plans for 2011:

1. Get my weight back under control and at around 78 kg by June at the latest;

2. Start on the High-Intensity Training Program on the home trainer. Today.

3. Get all those stories in my head and in draft form onto the blog.

4. Plan to do some organized rides, including, but not limited to:

• Nordrhein-Westfalen CTFs (country tours, off-road)
• the Amstel Gold Race, Saturday, April 16
• Rund um Köln, Easter Monday, April 25
• Josef-Oster-Bikemarathon, Sunday, May 1
• Velothon Berlin, Sunday, May 22
  
• Deutschland Grand-Prix time trial, Bad Salgau, Saturday, June 4
• Bonn-Eupin-Bonn, Sunday, June 12
• Lost Boys Tour of Europe, Austria, June 25-July 10
• Badenweiler Retro-Classic, August
• 6. Hessen Cup Bikemarathon, Sunday, August 21
• Waltroper-Münsterland-Marathon, Sunday, September 18
• L’Eroica, Chianti, Sunday, October 2

5. I have my brand-new Youth Hostel card, so there will be a lot of touring rides, broken into stages:

• the Limesstrasse, 816 km between the Rhine and the Danube following the Roman defensive wall;
• the Ruhrtal Radweg, 220 kms from Sauerland to the Rhein

• the Kaiser-Route Radweg, 413 kms from Aachen to Paderborn, following the route of Charlemagne in his conversion of the Saxons;
• Römer-Route Radweg, 315 kms along the route of the Romans from Xanten to Detmold;
  
• Riding in the Sauerland;
• Riding in the Eifel Mountains;
• Riding in the Siegtal.
  

In addition, I will try my hand at track racing, wheelbuilding, and off-road riding. Maybe I will finally learn to ride no-handed. And, as I promise myself every single January, I will make an effort to learn Italian.

I am a bit concerned about the second half of the season. Biblical "scholars" (here and here, for example) are claiming that Judgment Day will be May 21, which would probably mean the cancellation of the Velothon and subsequent events. However, it seems from this that the world will not be destroyed until October 21, leaving enough time to ride l'Eroica after all.

New Year's Resolutions Progress Report for February

Somehow the first two months of the year have zipped by and it is now March 1. As my monthly ritual of public humiliation, I once more am forced to provide details of how my New Year's Resolutions are being met (or not):

Goal No. 5: Weigh 75 kg by June 1

After the very rapid weight loss I have seen since mid-December, things have slowed down as expected. My current weight is 76.6 kg (168.8 lbs), but the lowest I hit in February was an even 76.0 kg (167.5 lbs). It is very encouraging that I only have just over 1 kg (2.2 lbs) to shed in the next three months so barring any serious backsliding this is looking good.

Goal No. 6: Learn to ski fearlessly around corners and downhills

My cross-country ski classes went well, and the "Help on Hills" course was a big sucess. The next day I went out to Mer Bleue where I discovered that the tracks were very icy and my excellent one-day experience of snowplow turning did not help a whole lot. Since then the weather has not worked out so well, being either brutally cold or rainy, without much nice snow at all.

Goal No. 7: Be able to do 101 pushups in a row, beating Groover

I am up to 35 now, and my chin-up count has reached 12. On track, I think, but how on earth did she do 100?

In terms of rides planning, the North Carolina training camp is organized for April 1-5. Hooray!

The new time trial frame has been built-up and is undergoing final adjustments. This will be a very sweet ride and I feel faster just sitting on it. Look for a detailed report on Dreadnought 2 soon. And the Louis Garneau skinsuit is here so I will look very UCI ProTourish. The first time trial is April 10 but I think it will be too cold for a short-sleeved skinsuit then.

Between having the old time trial bike taken apart and off the trainer, and a minor bout of flu, I have not been able to train much this past week. I had planned to train for 23 hours this month and actually got in 31:30 so nothing to complain about there. In addition, I have been riding BlackAdder to work every day since February 9. There have been some days when it was very hard, like this past Monday and Tuesday when it was around -22C when I left home, but this is definitely earlier than I have managed before.

Resolution Progess: February Report

A month ago I set out my New Year's Resolutions since I understand that putting them out in front of everyone encourages you to meet them. Of course we are still buried under snow to some extent here in Ottawa but I thought I should do a Progress Report and Reality Check on a monthly basis.

Resolution No. 5: Weigh 75 kg by June 1

I am surpassing expectations here. In mid-December, when I began to keep records seriously, I weighed in at a porky 82.6 kg. Yesterday I was at 77.2, a drop of 5.4 kg or just under 12 pounds in six weeks. I should have no problem getting rid of 2.2 kg (4.8 pounds) by June 1. But I really would like to drink more than one beer a week again.

Resolution No. 6: Learn to ski fearlessly around corners and down hills

On Friday, Saturday and Sunday I enjoyed my cross-country ski lessons at the Terry Fox Athletic Facility. The best part was Sunday where I discovered I could do snowplow turns even on the Frightening Big Hill. Amazingly, I did not fall down once. The right turns went superbly so now I just need to practice left-hand ones. Oh, and stopping. Next Saturday my 3 hour lesson will be "Help on Hills."

Resolution No. 7: Be able to do 101 pushups in a row, beating Groover

I am up to 25 pushups, done achingly slowly and with good form. This is pretty hard but I am seeing progress. The other parts of the strength training program are going well: from a miserable performance doing reverse chin-ups (a single one, actually), I had no difficulty doing 10 this morning. I am up at 5:00 am every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to get to the gym for my strength training and have discovered I am now enjoying lifting weights and drawing up and redrafting workout programs. It might be Abs Year yet! On the other hand, the highly feminine Betty Betty may be picking up her newspaper in inappropriate night attire but she is racking up 270 pounds in her leg press workouts so I should just shut up about the abs for now.

Once the weather clears I can work on my other resolutions. I now have a new time trial frame (black and sinister) and a Louis Garneau skinsuit is on its way in preparation for the time trial season. 40 km/h: here I come!

Nine Tips to Keep You Exercising

Fitness club in Bali
Photo by Matt@TPE, Creative Commons

An excellent piece by Gretchen Rubin at slate.com extolls the virtues of exercise and goes on to list nine ways to keep that most commonly made and regularly broken New Year's Resolution to work out more. I find the list so good (and so in sync with my own experience) that here are the suggestions in their entirety:


1. Always exercise on Monday. This sets the psychological pattern for the week.

2. If at all possible, exercise first thing in the morning. The longer the day goes on, the more likely you are to get derailed.

3. Never skip exercising for three days in a row. You can skip a day, and you can skip two days, but on the third day, you must exercise no matter how inconvenient. (This rule is more effective than it sounds; it kept me exercising regularly during college.)

4. Give yourself credit for the smallest effort. When my father started running, he said that all he had to do was put on his running shoes and close the door behind him. I never push myself hard, because I know that if I did, I might stop exercising altogether. And don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The 15-minute walk you do take is better than the three-mile run you don't take.

5. If you don’t have time both to exercise and take a shower, find an activity that doesn’t require a shower afterward, like yoga or walking. I do an extremely tough weight-training regimen that doesn’t make me sweat. (And yes, it is effective, even with no sweat!)

6. Look for affordable ways to make exercising more pleasant or satisfying. Could you upgrade to a nicer gym? Buy yourself a new iPod? Work with a trainer? Get a pedometer? (They’re only $20.) A lot of people are feeling a real money crunch right now, but exercise is a high life priority, so if you can afford it, this is a place to spend some money if that helps.

7. Remind yourself of the benefits from exercising. Personally, I’m more motivated by short-term gratifications like “I’ll feel more focused” or “I’ll sleep better” than long-term considerations like “I’ll live longer” or “If I have surgery, I’ll recover quicker.” A trainer told me that, in her experience, men are more motivated by the idea of improving their performance (a better tennis game) or restoring an ability (climbing stairs without getting out of breath); women are more motivated by the promise of improving their appearance.

8. Think about context. If you find it much harder to go running in winter than summer, maybe the real trouble is that you don’t like the cold. Do you hate the loud music in your gym? Is your workout so exhausting that you can’t face the rest of your day?

9. When choosing an activity, a gym, or an exercise class, make convenience a top priority. You’re much more likely to go to a mediocre gym near your office or home than to a great gym that’s out of your way.

Apart from the happiness gain you'll get from the exercise, merely the fact that you've kept your resolution to yourself will boost your happiness.

New Year's Resolutions for 2009

Will this finally be my Year of the Abs?
(with better hair, I hope)

The New York Times had a recent piece on the failure of most people to meet their New Year's Resolutions, with most abandoning their efforts by mid-February. Changing a lifestyle is not easy: talk-show host Oprah Winfrey was cited as an example as her very public efforts to get fit and lose weight have boomeranged. She dropped from 237 pounds to 160, ran marathons and so forth and is now back at 200. Considering she can afford to have a personal trainer and a personal chef on call 24 hours a day, what hope is there for the rest of us?

I have been able to hold my weight down since the Fat Cyclist's B7 Weight Loss Competition two years ago but I can improve. This is the cyclist's mantra since the endless training and obsessive food concerns actually do lead to results. They say that the best way to reach a goal is to let everybody know that you are trying to achieve it. I have been considering cycling goals for the coming year and now in Front of the Whole World I present them:

Goals:

1. time trial every week with the club (at least once the roads are clear!)

2. achieve 40 km/h in a 15 km time trial by June 1

3. do the Almonte 40 km time trial in 1:03 (current time is 1:06)

4. ride the Ontario Provincial championships for experience in September

5. weight at 76 kg by June 1 (currently 81.6; I have already started using FitDay.com to track my weight and diet)

6. learn to ski fearlessly around corners and down hills (I have already signed up for courses at the end of January for this)

7. Be able to do 101 pushups in a row, beating Groover.

Rides Planned:

Virginia/North Carolina Training Camp in late April 2009
Cirque du Cyclisme, followed by Great Appalaichan Trail ride in mid-June
Cycling in Germany and Northern Italy, July/August
Cycling Ironman Course at Lake Placid, NY
Cycling in the Finger Lakes region of NY

Of course, I proclaim that "This year is Abs Year!" every year and I swear I will learn Italian properly as well but of course having posted this I will have to revisit it on December 31, 2009. And good luck to everyone with their own resolutions!