I've Only Gone and Done It!!

Back on Wednesday 14th April, and following some converations with friends about fitness goals, I set myself the challenge of travelling 100 miles before my holiday – in 45 days (see here: http://splodzblogz.wordpress.com/2010/04/14/100-mile-challenge-begins/).

And today, with two days still left to go before I head off on my break, I’ve done it! Yay!

It turned into a cycling challenge really – I did all 100 miles either on my mountain bike around where I live, or on our old broken exercise bike which just about stays together enough to use when the weather outside isn’t favourable.

Here it is – my last eight miles!

Some bike rides were short, others quite long, some took me out into the Lincolnshire countryside, others had me cursing the four walls I was stuck in – but each mile I did got me one little bit closer to my goal.

You want some stats then? 

Over the last 43 days I have cycled 100.1 miles in 8 hours, 48 minutes and 18 seconds – that’s an average pace of 11.51 miles an hour.  My longest ride was 15.79 miles when I had a Friday off work, and my shortest was just 3.37 one evening when I didn’t have very long and the headwind was horrible.  The fastest ride I did was on the exercise bike at just over 15 miles an hour – and that hurt!

I learnt quite a few things over the last 43 days too… let me summarise:

• Cycling is painful on the bum (ok I knew that already!) but that is made much better with a pair of proper cycling shorts which I gave in and bought about one week into my challenge. Fantastic things despite looking very strange!
• I get a pain in my chest if I do a bike ride into a strong headwind, which a lot of women find.  The pain comes a couple of hours after I’ve finished the ride and lasts for a day or two.  The first time it happened it was quite worrying but ok once I knew it was a common thing.  I found relaxing my arms when cycling into a headwind helped.
• I like to think I’m motivated with exercise but I’m really not.  This challenge was really tough for me to do as I’m a very lazy person who would much rather lay on the sofa and watch Extreme Makeover Home Edition than go out and exercise.   I often had to really force myself to get on and do some miles, but this got easier as the days went by.

About two weeks ago I really felt like this challenge was impossible.  I was lagging behind on my miles and thought about adding in some walking into the equasion (I’ve been on a couple of long walks in the last month which would have helped the total along).  But I didn’t give in and instead gave it everything, going further when I did have time to get the bike out so the total increased quickly, and that was great motivation.  Then when on Monday I saw I only needed eight more miles I knew that tonight I just had to get on and finish it in one last ride.

It feels great to meet my goal, even though it was only a silly little thing I set myself to try and get me to exercise more.

Maybe I should set myself another target when I come back from holiday?