FAILURE!!!

oh dear, opening myself up for abuse here to finding excuses, i did my work, worked all day Sunday till about 430, came home and got changed into my cycling gear, sexy big daddy style bibshorts and a t shirt as it was quite warm still. put my heart rate monitor on, switched on my garmin and did my safety checks on my bike(you should do these you never know if your wheel will fall off!!) felt the tyres and the rear one was low so pulled the small pump out of my rucksack and proceeded to inflate the tyre, 40lbs, 50lbs PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT, the valve snapped off with my obvious manly hand action, "oh fluff" i muttered to myself, quickly released the quick release wheel (greatest invention since the....wheel) and took the tyre off and removed the tube, ran, well walked up the stairs to find another tube and came back down reassembled the tyre and tube onto the wheel and for the second time began to inflate the tyre, 30lbs, 40lbs PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT, valve number 2 snapped, either there was a problem with the valves or I'm just too much of a man, clumsy man at that!

so having knackered my only spare tube i was left with no option but to cancel the ride i was looking forward to, cue accusations of "any excuse ". 
i had the dilemma of whether to take the wheel to the bike shop and get them to true the wheel and fit new tube or order some tubes and do it myself, being a bit of a tight ar$e i decided not to pay the shop and ordered some on line, i ordered 5 so I've got a few chances of cocking it up again.


in 6 days time its my ride from Manchester to Chester for breakthrough breast cancer, i have decided to wear pink for the day as a show of support for all those ladies who have or have beaten cancer, my mum included, I'm sure ill manage to get a few photos of me in pink for all those who need a laugh.

SUCCESS!

I've woken up on a Sunday morning way too early, its 7am and there's no point lying in my pit like a teenager so i am up and blogging before i go to work, yes work on a Sunday morning i must be an idiot. 

truth is my parents bought a house 3 weeks ago and I've been ripping out the kitchen and bathrooms and refitting them with brand new stuff from top to bottom, lowering ceilings, plastering walls, tiling, painting and generally moving things from one place in the house and back again, oh and spending lots of time looking for tools i keep forgetting where I've put.


yesterday i planned on going for a gentle cycle ride after working there but in the end i didn't get away from there until gone 7pm and i was starving, that's a good sign isn't it? feeling hungry must mean i haven't had as much food as i would normally have. i went to sainsburys as it is 50 yards from my door, much nearer than the 100 to Lidl, 120 to Aldi, 200 to Iceland, 300 to Marks and Spencer's and 1000 to Tesco, i plan to stop going to sainsburys and walk to the next furthest one away each week, eventually when I'm fitter i will end up at Tesco in Lands End, now theres an idea for a bike ride!!


anyhow, seeing as i got a compliment from Lee the plasterer yesterday saying how i looked like i had "lost some beef" i decided to have a weigh in this morning, if you remember from my first page i started my life changing way of life at 220lbs, well i jumped on the scales, breathed out in case the air in my lungs aided a false reading and closed my eyes, prayed to an invisible unproven master or mistress in the sky and waited for the beep of the scales to tell me it had registered my weight, i looked down in anticipation remembering i had been very good this week and had no chocolate or biscuits or crisps and if i say so myself I've worked up a sweat at work once or twice lifting plasterboard onto the ceilings, the result.........
216.8lbs 

that's a loss for all you mathematical geniuses of 3.2lbs, I'm very happy with that and its a good start considering I've done absolutely no exercise at all, i know you can lose a lot of water at the start of a weight loss programme but i don't care its hard enough as it is.

so today after work, NO!  im not going to work until 7pm today and will aim to finish around 3pm get home, change and get on my bike and do some miles as this time next week I'll be in my pink t shirt cycling from Manchester to Chester, pictures will be posted of me in my attire so you can see if theres any difference.

above is me last year on the HELP FOR HEROES big battlefield bike ride and if i say so myself I'm not exactly ripped am I? that England jersey was an XXXXL I think and i fit it snugly, maybe next year i could do one of those before and after pictures wearing the same clothes and having enough room inside them for 2 people. 

and below is me in 2009 so as you can see my problem area is my middle, my spare tyres, all those saved up sausage rolls, pies, chocolate, crisps and pints of beer. its a hell of a lot to be carrying around extra and it has taken a toll on my back and knees I'm sure.

A LITTLE ABOUT MY PAST

Well where do i start?

Today Mattthew, i'm going to be Geoff, 45 years old, 5'7" and feeling a complete useless wreck of a human being.
but I do have a vision and a goal, to get myself a lot healthier than i currently am. I'm 220lbs in weight, I've used the american format of lbs as nobody will know how many stones that is.

its 15st 7lbs for those who wish to gasp in horror, at my worst i think i tipped 16st on the scales, yes i had to go to a public weighbridge to weigh in.
The picture on the left is how i feel i look, lazy, sedentary and depressed I've let myself get into this state again, just imagine that body and the head of George Clooney and that's probably a good description of me.




As a child I was always active and outside, football in winter, cricket in the summer and tennis when Wimbledon was on, i didn't have a bike until i was about 12, my parents moved 3 miles from school and i didn't qualify for a free bus so i cycled there and back most days after doing the longest paper round in the world going up one of the steepest hills in Cheshire up to the farm by Delamere Park and back home, used to hate Wednesdays and Sundays(not the ice cream sundaes) as the local papers and Sunday supplements were a bit heavy to say the least, look at the paper boys and girls of today, they get mollycoddled with trolleys and hi vis bags, wimps, and their bags only have about 3 papers in!!


when i left school i immediately joined the British Army, more fitness than you can shake a camouflaged stick at, i was never any good at running but you were forced to do it and it did improve my overall fitness. i can remember doing a cross country run once a term as one company against another, A company was mine, B company were just useless, we had 4 terms and on the first one i was a young NIG(new intake group) think i came in 123rd, by the end of term 4 just before i passed out(something i do now thinking of running!) i came in 45th, yes they don't give medals to 45th place but i felt really good and even managed to sprint Usain Bolt style in the final 50 metres.
i spent 5 years serving my Queen and country, as well as doing 8 mile runs with full kit on there was always the football to keep me going but even then discovering beer and my diet was taking its toll on my fitness, i was starting to struggle with runs, this was a combination of being hungover most mornings and starting to put weight on. at the time i didn't think i was overweight but i did get many comments from the fitness geeks, wish id taken notice or had someone to put an arm around me and say "come on lets get you fitter", i found i was left to my own devices and went backwards. 
i did manage to do the Ripon half marathon in a very respectable time of 1 hr 40 Min's, wish i could do that now!!


on leaving the army, i was back in my home town of Northwich in Cheshire, not the leafy Cheshire of footballers but the industrial scar on the landscape of Cheshire, ICI decorates the skylines around here. i eventually managed to play in a football team on a Sunday morning, a few Saturdays and the odd evening 7 a side game but that was it. having sustained a few injuries the final straw was a torn ankle tendon which still plays havoc with my ankle now 22 years later so i packed in playing.
i did do some running prior to my wedding but that soon faded out a bit like the marriage really, guess i just didn't have the incentive back then. 
in 2008 in mid depression i decided i needed to do something, i do my best for charities and decided to search the Internet for something exciting to do, being an ex soldier one thing stood out for me, a new charity to provide rehabilitation for our wounded boys and girls had been set up and they were doing a cycle ride from Portsmouth to Paris, i signed up, 320 miles of french countryside it was advertised as, £2500 was needed to raise individually and that was daunting, in fact it was harder than the ride itself! i had bought an old racing bike off eBay, drove to Buxton to pick it up and got on it straight away, i enjoyed the training for the ride but was worried id struggle to do the 70-80 miles a day they said we'd be doing, so i decided to do 70 miles in a day. for anyone thinking of doing this you'll say to yourself "where the hell do i go?" i just hit the A49 and rode down to Shrewsbury got to about 35 miles and turned around, i took 2 bananas and a bottle of energy juice, that is never enough to keep you going, by the time i hit Tarporley about 5 miles from home my legs fell off, i had to stop to try and get some feeling back in them, i had no energy whatsoever, i searched in my back pack and found £2, my immediate thought was "CHOCOLATE!!!!" I summoned up some mental strength and rode the next 2 miles to a petrol station at a snails pace, how i managed to walk into the shop still amazes me, £2 worth of chocolate and i was boosted enough to get home. covered in sweat i thought to myself that France was going to be very hard indeed.

the ride in France was a fantastic experience and id recommend it to anyone, yes anyone, there were people in their 70's doing the ride, some even bigger than me belly wise and we all made it around as did the inspiring lads who had lost limbs on active service in Afghanistan, you couldn't not finish when they are so determined to do it with half a body!!
i liked it, no! loved it that much i went back in 2011 and did it again. 


in between the rides i took myself away again to escape from married life and went to the island of Malta to do the half marathon there again with the soldiers charity help for heroes. being a bit depressed again I decided it was a bit of a holiday and ended up drinking too much and having a good time in the sun instead of preparing for the run. this took its toll and i pulled my calf muscle after 15 Min's of running, being the old soldier that i am i carried on and finished the course in a very sore and disappointing 2 hours and 30 Min's, carrying on tore my calf muscle and i was in agony, i am still suffering with this injury today 2 and a half years later.


so apart from the cycle rides and the half marathon i have done very little exercise for around 15 years, i still have a road bike and on the 29th of July i am cycling from Manchester to Chester which is around 48 miles for the charity BREAKTHROUGH BREAST CANCER i haven't done much training apart from  a 10 and a 20 miles ride a few weeks ago but I'm quietly confident of completing the task.


that's just a little about me, i hope you'll tune in again and follow me on my challenge to get fitter, healthier, reduce my BMI of 34 and waistline of 40 and hopefully this will enable me to live a bit longer, thanks for reading, Geoff