( Note to the reader - this draft blog has sat unpublished for a good few months! Lots to tell you all since I wrote this blog..... but let me take you back to early 2024...... )

I love the sense of a New Year allowing me to re-set, after a Christmas break of relaxing, recharging and at time reflecting, rolling into January usually is a time that I relish as I start a new, blank page for the year ahead.

2024 started differently as very sadly we lost our family dog Archie just before the end of 2023. He'd been the centre of our family for two days shy of eleven years, had been poorly for over a year with a terminal cancer diagnosis, but 2024 started without him...... and that gap, a significant gap for Jan, myself and our girls is only now something that we are starting to come to terms with.

As a result my cycling has only been of the commuting variety, a little over 390 miles cycled to date into and away from the office on Red the bike. I've also got no ridiculous cycling challenges planned (or at least booked in....there are always plans forming in my cycling brain!) but this week marks the start of an effort to get fitter.

As crazy as this might sound I don't think I've been as fit as when I arrived in Liverpool in late June 2023, or as when I arrived in Liverpool in early September 2022 (and its not Liverpool that is the reason or focus I felt fit at these times, but rather the multiple days in the saddle on Red, being guided by Satnav that allowed me to feel fit) (ish).

A daily commute to and from the office, even if I make an effort to cycle quicker, is unlikely to raise my fitness beyond the current levels, and with a lack of plans (and if I'm totally honest a financial focus on finishing our house this year, making cycle adventures not top priority) I felt the need to shake things up a little.

Jan has also felt the need to find a little more time to improve her own fitness ....... and sadly this isn't me announcing the purchase of a tandem and / or some form of joint cycle adventuring, we decided starting this week that we'd set our alarms a little earlier to get in some pre-breakfast exercise.

One of my possible cycling aims for this spring would be to break 100 miles cycled in one day. Readers of previous blogs might remember that day one of my cycle from Inverness towards John O'Groats should have allowed me to do just this, but a slight user error with SatNav / Strava meant I cycled this distance (or within a few metres / yards) but failed to record it !!!

My parents live in west Dorset and a cycle there or back , both of which I've completed one way is around 54 miles so in theory a ride there to see my parents, quick hello / lunch etc and ride home should add up to 108 miles in total in one day...... so allowing me to complete a 100 mile plus day of cycling.

Which leads me to my level of fitness; to be able to achieve this distance needs me to be far fitter than I am currently, so getting up a little earlier with Jan wanting to exercise could be a possibility of squeezing in some cycling. And that is precisely what I have started.......

In a similar style to previous running training when I took the decision to run a marathon for charity a few years ago, having not run any distance at all since being at school.... I planned a cycling training loop to and from my house, but a suitable length that I could simply cycle once, twice or more times to build up mileage without ever being too far from home.

In running terms this sort of training loop allowed me to feel confident that if I couldn't keep running it would never be too long a walk home..... for cycling this simply allows me to build up speed and / or distance over the next few days, weeks and hopefully months.

Day one saw me complete a reasonably quick 8 miles before breakfast, and if I could achieve this five times a day for the rest of the year this one additional ride per day could add over 1680 miles to my total for the rest of 2024........ not bad if I can make this a regular part of my daily routine. An extra loop making this ride 12 miles and this potential total closer to 2500 miles !