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Archive for January, 2011

Today I got of my lazy A%$ and decided to join the social rides of the Hemel Hempstead Cycling club, So I geared up and went to the meeting place at the scheduled time . I arrived about 3 minutes ahead and waited till the others will come.

when the time was 9:10 and i was still the only one at the meeting point , I decided to head out and ride alone , I picked a heading and with no set path started pedaling , eventually I did the Ashridge route which was a 28+ km ride – mostly hills and narrow roads.
I recorded this ride on my sports tracker application and uploaded it only to find out that the GPS started calculating the route 3 km into the ride Ashridge ride so it shows only a part of it … suits me right :-)

In my effort to reach as wide an audience as possible for my fund raising , I’ve talked to my contact in the Dogs Trust and he agreed to help me .

To that end I wrote a short 200 word story to be posted on the Dogs Trust website , and today I got an email telling me it is up and posted … so here is the article , with hopes it will help me help the Dogs Trust….The Dogs Trust Blog

As my efforts to raise sponsorship are failing and the goal of actually doing the ride seems to slip away from me , I approached several new places in order to raise awareness to my cause and perhaps be able to get more donations .

One of those place was the local news paper , and they did print it on their paper edition that you have to buy , then I called and asked to have it on the on-line version and they agreed to it – and so this is the article which they named Going the extra mile for man’s best friend .

Also I went to the Pets At home branch in Hemel and asked to put some of my flyers, I also get permission to hang around with the collection box – lets see how i can manage that.

After a too long a break , I managed to find the time and get on the bike for some practice , true it was not the ride I initially planned , but even a short ride is better then nothing . So the target set, warm cloth on , and I was off . it was good to feel the seat under me again and the cold wind on my face , until I got to the first hill climb , and then I noticed how out of shape I am – almost 3 month with no notable rides sent my fitness to hell .

The total distance of the ride was 17k (10.5 miles ) and it took me 45 minutes to do it – an abysmal time considering that i was doing that same distance it 35 minutes on my rides to work … and then I got home and realized I am suffering from food poisoning , so maybe I am not that out of shape – but I prefer to think that I am , and have a better motivator to push harder.

They say that life is what happens while you make plans , back home there is a similar saying that loosely translate to “every plan is the base of modifications” , and this week to me had been no exception . I planned to visit the gym and get some training time , and maybe even have a ride outside , but no .

I could only blame myself on some of it ( well most of it ) as I used the time to walk with Tenchi back from the train station after dropping Linor and Aeryn in the morning and walking back to it when it is time to pick them up , but he is just so happy to have long walks that I feel guilty if I spend the time not do it .

So I cleared the treadmill and decided to use it for a while , managed to get a 30 minute walk on that before the house chores required my attention – not a very good “training session” .

So I thought today i will do the walk back to the train station with intervals of jogging , and what do you know the weather decided to interject – rain pouring so bad the shoes were so soaked it was like walking with ankle weights – so no running there. I still don’t know if i’ll be doing the walk to pick Linor or let he do that – depends if the rain subsides.

Only good thing in this is that the walks are 4 Km each way – so I get to walk 8K each day , small comfort and some exercise is still good for me.