This morning I woke up at 5:30 am and got ready and then walked with my parents dog who is visiting to the BMX track and back as we both need to lose weight. I have been sick all week so I haven’t been walking or exercising at all as I didn’t feel up to it so it felt good to start my day with a walk.
As you can see from the Strava screenshot above we walked 4.36 miles in 1 hour and 24 minutes and climbed 482 feet while doing it. As you can see from the elevation graph below, we basically walked up the hill then walked around the top of the hill a bit and then walked back down the hill 🙂 This is basically because I live on one of the lower arts of Bath and the BMX track is at the top of a hill at Oddown so it is all uphill on the way and all downhill on the way back.
I usually struggle to walk up the hill to the track as it is really steep but this morning it felt a lot easier than normal which I’m not sure is because it was so early or because the dog was with me or a mixture of the 2 but I actually enjoyed the walk this morning and we almost managed to get 10000 steps in before 7am which is good. Adding the hill into the walk also made it harder and made me feel like I had accomplished something as well which is nice. I have to say that walking with the dog is way more enjoyable than walking on my own and it feels way less boring than just walking by myself does even though it is potentially slower. The dog has been asleep since we got home so I guess that she enjoyed it too 🙂
When we got back we went straight back to bed as my son is still asleep in the lounge so I have been wasting time waiting for him to wake up so that I can start cleaning and organising the flat when he wakes up.
The dog will be staying with me for the next few weeks to a month as my Mum us having eye surgery early next week so she is not allowed to bend down for 2 weeks after that so I said that I would look after the dog to make sure that mum didn’t overdo it and slow her recovery. Its actually a win win as I will have to walk more every day while the dog is here so I will hopefully drop a bunch of weight too. Also the dog is on a diet so all the walking will hopefully help with that too!
While I have been wasting time on the internet I stumbled upon a study that said that to be in the top 5 percent of people in the world at something you just need to do that thing for 18 minutes a day every day for a year! This got me thinking about my current situation and the best thing for me to do for the rest of the year training wise and I think that I may try working on my manuals and jumping 20 minutes a day every day for the rest of the year and see how I get on.
I am thinking that while I have the dog with me I spend this month getting into the routine of walking every day and then doing weights when I get home and then when the dog goes back to my parents I can continue to walk and workout before work and then try and do 20 minutes of flat manual practice and 20 minutes of jumping practice at lunch time or after work. For the first month or so I would prefer doing it at lunch time as there is less likely to be anyone at the track so I will be less embarrassed but once I can jump a bit I can start to ride the track in the evening and just practice on the track.
I am in a unique situation at the moment as I don’t need to work on my track speed or fitness until at least December this year so I can spend my time working on my skills for a good 6 months without having to worry about doing full laps and sprints so I can just enjoy leaning to ride my bike better for once. I have tried to work on my manuals before but I always end up replacing skill sessions with fitness sessions as I am invariably coming back from an injury and need to get my fitness and track speed back and I end up getting way faster but no more skilful so I end up crashing again and getting hurt again and the cycle starts again. My idea this time is to forget about racing for the rest of the year and instead focus on losing weight and getting in shape (walking and weights) while rehabbing my shoulder (stretching and weights) so that once I can start training for racing (sprints and full laps) I have a really good base fitness to build on. I am hoping that by working on my manuals and jumping while I am not racing for the rest of the year I will be able to master both skills so that when I start race training again I will be much faster as I will be able to jump and manual properly. I have also found that most tracks that we race nationals on have a big first jump which means that riders that can jump and manual well get over smoothly and quickly while the rest of us lose speed and go behind before the race has even begun. So with a bit of effort a day for the next 6 months I can hopefully bridge that gap and start to get faster.
I am not sure how easy it will be to fit the training in while I have the dog as she doesn’t like being left alone too much but I will try at least this month to fit in as many manual and jumping sessions as I can but once she is back at my parents house I will be able to fit training in easily.
For now I am going to go back to riding my DMR Sect jump bike to save my shoulder as I hurt it a bit again riding the Supercross on Friday night when I bonked a manual but on the jump bike I don’t even feel a bonked manual. Also casing on the jump bike also hurts way less and you are less likely to get thrown over the bars on a jump bike compared to a jump bike. I am going to go back to riding flats as well as I then don’t need to bring any special shoes to ride in. I will also take my body armour up to the container with a hanger so that I can leave it at the track so that I always have it there.
Later today I am going to go to the track and grab the DMR to bring it back home to get chain tensioners’s fitted to try and get the back wheel to stop moving.