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

Fingers crossed for a quick recovery.

I'm hoping a 10 hour sleep will sort it, I've found over this year that the fatigue builds up slowly and I start feeling rough after a few big/stressful days. When this happens, an early night has cured it.

It's the constant battle of being on the limit

Steve Abraham (of HAMR challenge and extreme Audax fame) wrote lots about how sleep debt affected his challenge.

(He was particular affected by sleep apnea which took a long time for him to realise he was actually suffering from.)

I'll see if I can dig up some links to where he wrote about it all.

But, yes, get some good rest and recovery.

I'll be interested to read that. Sleep debt is a great way to describe it, as eventually it needs to be paid. I feel it today

Is anyone doing the Ascnd X Rapha ride on Sunday from Walthamstow?

I didn't do the above, I spent all of Friday in bed and a lot of Saturday to try and sleep off this cold. I slept for around 12 hours each night from Thursday till Sunday because of this cold and I'm feeling a lot better now.

It's meant that I've fallen 260km behind the target distance, I'm going to try and catch up slowly this time. It wasn't the best idea to do a huge ride after concussion as this caused my first knee injury. I've only got 54 days left now so I have to play it very safe to complete this e.g. I can't get ill, injured or fall of in the ice... It does mean moving to more indoor riding, but I want to try and commute where safe.

How you feeling now? Back on it or still sick?

Have you seen Phil Gaimon is attempting to do a 100km a day during December on his Youtube.

Just to put into perspective what a massive accomplishment this is!

Friend of mine in Taiwan just did the same in November. He didn't enjoy it so, again, kudos to @Norfolkbound

Lol

Big up @Norfolkbound

Keep at it

I'm better now, it was Sunday when I started feeling myself again. I'm letting my body tell me what's best to recover for the lost distance, I do need the occasionally morning/evening off but this is very flexible. I need to do an extra 5km a day to finish but I find this better to do over the weekend and trying to remain on target through the week.

@HousecatHST I had a look at that, it'll be interesting to see how he gets on. A lad from GCN did a week and he was knackered.

@atz and @skinny thanks for the hype :)

this is astonishing. big up yourself @Norfolkbound

It's day 318 and I'm sitting around 240km down from the target distance, I'm finding it really difficult to sleep on Sunday nights at the moment. I had this issue for a while but it means I'm a lot more like to sleep in and drive to work on Monday. The mid weeks are very tough now and I think it's me worrying about another full week. I'm going to book the best weather day off this week and have a decent ride outside, this looks like Thursday. I did the majority of riding on the turbo last week and it was grim, definitely the most difficult week of this challenge. Any more than 10 hours on the zwift in a week and I go mad, I just find it incredibly boring. Once this challenge is over i'll try another indoor platform.

I have only 45 days left of this challenge so I need to chip away at the distance I am behind, Christmas will help a lot and my plan is to do 500km outside and 500km inside so I can keep fully catch up and potentially be ahead for the last weeks.

Hope all going well @Norfolkbound Getting to the exciting part of the adventure.

Once this challenge is over i'll try another indoor platform.

I suggest the sofa.

LOLd

Yeah, I'd fuck all the bikes into a shed/spare room/storage and not look at them until I felt an actual desire to go riding.

You need a local with a scooter to moto pace you around your favourite roads. Get distances done fast without being stuck inside.

That sounds nice :)

@hippy I'm thinking a couple weeks off the bike will be nice and the bikes need a rest too.

@cliveo thanks, yes it's getting exciting as it's soon to be completed.

Keep it up :)

I posted something a month or two back about how your motivation might suffer as you had pretty much cracked it but still had a lot of riding to do.

Turns out that was rubbish! It is still a hard challenge. It's easy to lose a couple of days and get behind schedule, and you are in the middle of winter. So you still have a battle on your hands to hit the goal.

The upside from that is that it might help your motivation, knowing you have a bit more to do than you thought you would have.

I think your approach is really good, just do a little bit more each day and claw it back, rather than going for the dramatic gesture, like an all-nighter to try to get it all back in one go, only to knacker yourself and fall behind again. It will be good to get a bit of a buffer at Christmas too. It would be a nightmare to go out on the last day still needing 100km and come off, or have a mechanical that you just can't get a part for in time, or something, and lose having won for 364 days but lost for one.

I remember that, at the time I felt like I had finished the challenge with 100 days to go and it would be easy to complete but I was very wrong. Even though the overall weekly hours have gone down because of swapping to more indoor riding, it's become a lot more difficult to stay motivated. I need to get back to commuting as I haven't done it since I was ill the other week.

I learnt my lesson from trying to do a big catch up after suffering from concussion and that didn't work at all. So i'll steadily catch up, more might be a better option and then I can have a buffer. Yes there's not many days left but this has a bigger risk as like you said if something goes wrong I'd lose it all. There's a lot of risk management

it might be silly, but why you don't ask any of your mates to virtually ride indoors with you?
I know, Zwift has this without the hassle but why you don't organize a sort of meeting with even LFGSS forumers and record this to do a sort of memorabilia video with zoom chat, people getting in&out only for some KMs with you etc...it will be indoor riding but with fun and lots of social interactions!
something like PC did: https://www.instagram.com/p/CBak4MAlspu/

Not sure if I've explained myself....but perhaps someone can translate my words hahah

I'd be up for some Zwift meetups if it helps with the monotony of indoor riding.

you can even doing a"sort of interview" about your year of cycling while indoor pedalling or just chill and tell jokes to the mass about that time ... etc etc...
I believe there are many LFGSS members who might want to share some pedalling with you but time/RL/distance/COVID prevents this ....

this could also help your fundraising :)