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November
November and December have been declared months of longer, slower efforts and a long-overdue attempt to get down to a sensible weight. And after a good Spring and Summer of racing and training it feels like this is the right time of year to change-down a gear and give my 48 yr old body a break from intense efforts.
Over the last few years my weight has fluctuated between 80kg (post 3 week trip to India pretending to be a food critic) and 72kg (post 3 week cycling trip to the Alpes pretending to be a bike rider). I'm currently around 77kg.
A couple of weekends ago we went to Junior's cycling club's presentation night. Handing out the gongs was Keith Lambert. Just inaugurated into British Cycling's Hall of Fame; a local ex-pro who now manages the national u23 squad. Keith had Adam Yate's white jersey from the Tour de France. It was tiny. Adam is 5'6'' and around 57kg apparently. That's 1.5'' shorter than me. And 20kg lighter.
OK, so I'm not interested in challenging for the maillot jaune. And the maillot blanc is definitely out-of-the-question now. But it was still quite a shocking statistic. It's not like I'm a seal, for example, who needs blubber to stay alive whilst feeding in Arctic waters. I'm a middle-aged bloke with an office job who likes a beer.
Or I could look at it like this. If I was on the start line of a race and somebody offered me a rucksack containing only 7 bags of sugar (ie 7kg) and said "Err, can you carry this around with you? New regulations I'm afraid." Then I would just walk to my car. I wouldn't tolerate the burden. But that's what I'm imposing on myself.
So I've only been doing excercise at an easy-to-moderate pace. And I went to the shops the other night armed with a familiar sans-carb shopping list.
Omelette for breakfast. Steak for Dinner. Lentil and tuna salad for lunch. Repeat.
And the chapatis and rice will have to take a back-seat; although we're off to India for 3 weeks in December so that's going to be a challenge. I will allow myself the odd potato. And I have a couple of barrels of homebrew in the basement. One is a Nelson Sauvin pale ale that I've been particularly looking forward to.
Smoke me a kipper. This aint going to be easy.
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