Tag Archives: 8000km

Marv’s bike log…January 2018…where did 2017 go??

Dear Rouleurs,

As MMT’s age creeps towards the big….5…0….  sigh, he’s noticed that days just keeping slipping by at an increasing rate…boo.  There is so much to do and so many places to ride.  However, summer 2018 style has been a particularly pleasant and January was an excellent month for cycling, with lots of sun, some rain and strangely, quite a bit of humidity. The humidity came care of some heat trough that lodged itself over SE-Australia for a few weeks.  Some mornings, MMT could close his eyes and feel the warm warm moist air and think that he was in Thailand.  Ah…that’s proof that MMT is in desperate need of a holiday 😉

January was significant for a couple of other events.  First, MMT completed the ridiculous flaming, dog poo covered, jumping hoop, obstacle course that was re-applying to work with his current employer.  More on that in March, MMT hopes.  Second, MMT returned back to  the RCC crew and completed a number of speedy south side rides. Finally, MMT completed the 65km course of Cadel Evan’s Peoples Ride on a very muggy Saturday morning down in Geelong.  The last two points contributed to a bumper result for January.   Here’s my monthly graph for Janaury 2018.  Already, MMT is up on monthly target, achieving a very productive 800km even. That’s a pretty good start.

On the back of that work, MMT’s Strava graph is also very consistent.  As stated before the weather has been very good so, riding 21 out of possible 31 days, means really solid workouts on the bike.  This makes MMT very, very happy :-).  MMT’s ride log can be found here.

Before signing off, a digression about this log.  One of the things that MMT was ruminating over during the Christmas holidays was what kind of target, he should set for 2018.  Afterall, whilst MMT was YAFFed many times in 2017, he still managed nearly 8,000km.  Which is not bad for a 48 year old “Clydesdale” with a bad back, who is desperately trying to keep his weight down to something that starts with a ‘9’.  So what to do??  Well, part of the answer lies in doing a few Strava challenges to keep motivated and continuing to ride with RCC.  The final annual MMT decided on was 7500km, or approximately 145km a week.

Whole point of this effort, was three fold:

  1. Cycling is fun and MMT wants to get better at it.
  2. MMT would like to loose about 10 kg this year.
  3. MMT is aiming to complete an “l’eroica” style event in Italy or Spain, to celebrate his 50th Birthday.

So really, the 145Km target is meant to be way of getting to those goals, rather just counting kms. So there it is, why MMT keeps churning Kms and blogs.

Until next blog, ride safe.

Marv

Marv’s 2017 Annual Report

Dear Rouleurs,

Hasn’t 2017 disappeared in the blink of an eye.  MMT had a great year all things considered.  He watched his adorable little red-haired girl grow from rug rat to toddler and attend childcare.  He received the best ever Father’s Day present in the form of her first steps in this world…awesome work bubba girl.  His beloved AFL football team, Richmond Tigers broke its 37 year drought and won the 2017 AFL Premiership.  MMT still gets goosebumps and feels a bit teary when thinks about that one.

So onto cycling, like Alan Kohler on ABC I have a bunch of pretty charts to present.  The first one shows my yearly worm, or how I accumulated kilometres over the course of the last 12 months. The sharp kick at the end is the Festive 500.  In December, alone, MMT did nearly 1000km.

The second, has the same data set, except its month by month.  This graph clearly shows the impact of worst cold and flu season Victoria has for 15 years. MMT was seriously YAFFed in April, June, August and September.  It also shows how doing Rapha related stuff has pushed my annual kilometres to almost 8,000.

The final graph shows my ride activity month on month.  It seems the combination of work, life, Bubba mean that about 22 to 25 rides a month is what I can expect for the next few years.

So in summary the numbers look like this:

So in an average month MMT, does 24 rides, for 660km, which takes about 28 hours and burns 33,460 calories.  Honestly, MTT feels that he should be much, much thinner than he is, after seeing these numbers.  That would be something to work on in 2018.

Until next blog, ride safe

Marv

PS Go Richie Porte in Team BMC in the 2018 TDU