Friday's Cycle-athon!

Well, I'm no Tour de France cyclist, but I did pedal my butt off for TWO WHOLE HOURS on Friday night! I was on the mag trainer, so was able to sit up and stretch my neck regularly, which means I haven't gotten any neck pain this morning!

I was hoping to watch a movie while I rode, but Mat really wanted to watch the Footy game, so I tried my darndest to go for the whole thing, but ended up pulling up with 30 seconds to go in the third quarter. There wasn't anything left in me to finish those last 30 seconds, and there definitely was not another half an hour or more to make it to the end of the game!

A 100 minute football game (4x25minute quarters), when all is said and done, takes three hours including breaks, commercials, stop time, and all the pointless blathering that goes on before the game actually gets under way!

I did take two short breaks, which I did not count towards my time total.  I only counted the time my legs were actually spinning over. I took one 5 minute break after an hour, when I added some padding to my handlebars. Big relief! The second was a 5 minute stretch break after the next thirty minutes, my butt and hamstrings and 4th toe on my right foot were cramping up!  Even bigger relief! That was into the half-time show, and I hopped back on for the next quarter, and tried really hard to ride to the siren, but damned if I could do any more.

122 minutes of cycling, working at about 80rpm most of the time (so just a steady going pace on medium gearing), with a total of 10 minutes break.  I started just before 8:30, and finished just after 10:30pm. I get to count 50km for that effort!

There are two reasons why I did such a big ride.  One is because I didn't do any riding this week and wanted to get my distance up and the other is because I have a new goal:

My newly formed goal is to do two hours of continuous exercise five days a week.  

In about four weeks time I'd like to increase one day per week to 3 hours, and then in another four weeks time take that one day up to 4 hours.  It wouldn't have to be a single 'event', I could run for 1 hour, cycle for 1 hour, or row and swim, or whatever.  This is all in a bid to improve my stamina over the long haul, because I won't be able to stop for a nanna nap when it comes time to do the Blackwood!