36,500km in 365 days - Cycling Against Living Miserably

Photoshop the dirt off it? I swear I've bought new bikes that aren't as clean...

I do have a cleaning regime
which takes about 10 minutes. I like to keep my bikes in good condition, as mentally i feel it's 0.2% faster.

Thanks for noticing. I'm number 7 for Further East too

What is/was the wall hook for?

I like the circle effect around it.

Wait, what was this thread about again? :)

It's for the old door at work, the building is a converted train workshop

Just found this thread. I am exhausted just reading it. What an amazing idea and how amazing to have followed through on it. My only sadness is that you have set the bar so high that I could never dream of achieving anything like this.

How’s the knee doing?

Thanks Clive and for the donation :) I'm almost 2/3rds through now which is a great feeling

It feels OK actually, i did about 20km commute this morning without pain but i was riding softly. I spent Saturday and Sunday doing as much physio/recovery as humanly possible, I even went to a spa on Saturday evening (My sister got me into her gym) to do hot/cold therapy which seemed to help. I'm going to take this week lightly and not push any watts so hopefully it'll be ok. I managed 4 months without injury and that had a 54 hour week in, so I think I can get it back under control quickly.

I'm still gutted about having to scratch Further East but on the positive side, I know that post challenge I can be a lot stronger/faster with structured training and S&C.

Sorry to hear about that.

The strain that you are putting your body under is incredible and it is unsurprising that you are suffering from various issues. I hope that you can overcome them without risking any long term damage. Aside from the physical, how is the mental side of this challenge? That is, after all, why you started it.

I hope that being cheered on from the Forum helps.

The forum helps a lot too be honest, I'm glad I've got this page. Not only for advice but it's a good way of documenting the challenge and for others to get behind it.

My knee issues are coming from an imbalance of muscles so with strength work after the challenge it should be good long term.

The mental side varies, riding gives me a lot of clarity which I enjoy. There's times that I think i'm running away from wider issues and haven't taken some serious things that have happened this year fully in emotionally e.g family fatality and illness. It's hard when there's a daily/weekly/year long goal that needs to be achieved, to let too much distract you away from that even if it's something big.

What I have struggled with on far lesser challenges than yours, is the voice in my head screaming at me when I wake up, sore limbed and exhausted: "You don't really need to do this you know, you could roll over and go back to sleep". It is overcoming that temptation that I found the greatest mental challenge. Then again, the longest period of time in which I have subjected myself to such suffering was a mere 10 days, after five of which I was over the hump and only had five days to go. 365 days is a mental mountain and I am in awe of you.

Oh, and what are you planning for your last ride?

Festive500 in one ride?

Nah, if you're on target, do a fucking short ride to a pub and make it a celebration of your achievement.

Doing some big thing just to be fucked afterwards is definitely something old me would do. New me, wants to buy you a drink when you're done though.

36,500km to get a pint out of Hippy?

I'm in!

If you ride that in a year, I'd even stretch to that fancy imported stuff... what's it called? Stella Artois yeah?

The last day of this challenge will be Saturday 22nd of January, with the idea on the day is to do one of my favourite routes and end at a pub, there's a couple which I like in Norwich (one's a brewery so more likely there as it's got a decent amount of space). If @hippy offers a beer then it has to end at a pub right?

@MisterTomTom Yes to Festive 500 in one go, doing a 500km ride is something that I've wanted to do for a while now and unfortunately didn't achieve it with Further East so I'll do it around Xmas as i have time off to recover etc.

Fat Cat?

Yes?

I was thinking Redwells.

It's Redwells, I used to go there most Fridays after rowing but that was the glory days with Brick and not their own brand of pizzas (still nice though)

I've still not been there (always seem to end up at the Brewery Tap). Must make the effort before the weather gets too cold.

I was there the other Sunday with the Artel cycling group, good beer sadly the wrong side of the city for me though

Didn't know you had the privilege of being East Anglian.

(From the edge)