Walking

Today I went for a walk. Quite a long one: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&q=DN33+1EN&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&biw=1280&bih=711&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x487884a52a1de7eb:0x930d2bda1454cdca,Grimsby,+South+Humberside+DN33+1EN&gl=uk&ei=o5s-TomyO8-whAeEosmLAg&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=image&resnum=1&ved=0CBgQ8gEwAA

I decided that I'd make something of my Sunday and so I put on some hiking socks and boots and set out for the beach. I packed some water, enhanced with effervescent sports hydration tablets (the particular brand is High5. I prefer the citrus flavour ones : http://www.superfit.co.uk/high-5-low-cal-zero-active-hydration-1-x-20-flavoured-tablets.html) and some oatbars.

It was excellent weather for it too; not too hot and with a good breeze to help keep me cool. As I'm due to go on holiday to Austria to walk in the hills, I wanted to ensure that I've got some miles in my legs in preparation. I've been doing a lot of walking recently just going about my business in my summer break. This has given me the basic fitness I need to get by in Austria. However, I wanted to test myself on a route of roughly the distance that I'll be doing on holiday.

This 9 mile route is over mostly flat terrain and because Google maps doesn't allow for off road route plotting, the parts where I walked on the sand aren't shown. So for completion, on the more northern part of the route, I did walk on the beach and on the sandy thoroughfare near the docks. A lot of the route is over paths and roads. This isn't representative of what I'll be covering in Austria but the distance is so it's all good fun and good prep for my holiday!!

health

Yoga for cycling

As an avid cyclist, I want to take care of my body so I can continue to enjoy cycling often and with as little injury-incurred recovery as possible. To do this there are many factors to consider, some obvious and some more subtle. A lot of the techniques put forward here aren't cycling specific but can help support a cyclist well during a training regime or through the daily commute by bike.

Nutrition
The age-old Adage 'You are what you eat' is an old chestnut that keeps coming back, especially around times of traditional food and drink abuse (Xmas, New year, Birthdays, etc.). It is true, to a certain extent, and worth bearing in mind if you're particularly motivated toward a healthy lifestyle. Diet is an important factor and to ensure that you're not deviating from a pretty healthy set-up already, see your GP for some advice. They will undoubtledly point you towards the food pyramid and this is an excellent way to start your food planning. For cyclists, it is essential that you consume lots of good quality protein. This can come in the form of protein shakes but if you want to keep it real, then eating quality chicken breast and turkey steaks is the way forward. These food sources are lean and healthy and swapping these into your diet in place of red meat will help protect your heart from copious amounts of fat that run through the animal flesh.

Fish Supper
Another good tip for food intake is tinned macarel and tuna, it keeps for ages and when it is stored under oil, it takes on the aroma of the oil as it penetrates the fish tissue. The oil from the fish is the same kind of oil which makes up the cod liver oil capsules and when combined with the sunflower storage oil, it gives the benefits of B vitamins too. The oil from the fish penetrates your joints and keeps them supple and fluid. You can capitalise on this extra bendiness by taking up some yoga practise.

Yoga: Bend and Stretch and Breathe
Normally given a cameo appearance in sit-coms on television, yoga is typically personified in popular media by people so bendy, they can fire a bow and arrow with their feet... whilst standing on their hands or all coiled up to the size of a small suitcase. These, like many other stereotypes are true to an extent but the reality is much more diverse. There are people looking to support their back as they work in offices and are concerned about posture and joint pain.

The cyclist can benefit from yoga by reversing all the damage done to the upper back, shoulders and neck from being hunched over the handlebars for hours a week (a day in the case of the cyclist commuter). There is yoga designed specifically for cyclists and is easily found via google search but the general focus is working out the afore mentioned areas. There is an emphasis on groundwork and back bends to reverse the position the body has been in. This is an excellent way to ensure that you don't get a long term injury requiring physiotherapy and, when used in tandem with regular yoga, can help eliminate sprains and strains by making the muscles and joints more supple and mobile. Also, as time goes on, your posture will improve as you're essentially practising putting your body into poses.

Not only can a regular yoga practise ensure that your body is flexible and not damaged by cycling, the breathing component of all yoga moves can help still the mind so the poses become a way to relax and de-stress after a trying work day. It can help give you a much more balanced approach to life and as you're breathing more, more oxygen gets to the brain and muscles so you get an pronounced feeling of well-being relative to not using yoga.

I hope this post helped and keep on enjoying cycling :)

health

Summer Cycling

I had a great time cycling today. I had to go and pick up some groceries from the shops and I decided that, rather than take the bus, I would go by bike. It had rained about 4 hours previously so the air was nice and crisp. Perfect for cycling as it keeps you cool and is really nice to breathe as it keeps you fresh.

Riding down the street, there was a light breeze and that helped keep me cool too. I have a tendancy to ride quickly even if I intend to go out for a slow, easy ride. The breeze helped me from turning into a sweatbox as I cycled to the shops. I parked my bike and locked it to the steel sheffield frame outside and went in.

After finishing buying some essentials, I cycled home again. The whole trip was really pleasant and simply goes to highlight how useful and fun cycling can be when integrated into one's daily routine or, as I did, taken as an option to mix it up a bit.

Bike Maintenance Basics

So you've got your shiny new bike and you've ridden it all over the place. You've been up and down and round and back home. Your bike has definately had a bit of hammer and will need support in the way of maintenance and regular upkeep to ensure you can go many miles further together.

Chain Reaction
Depending on how long you've ridden your bike for and where you store your bike day-to-day, you can work out how much maintenance you need to give your chain to ensure that your drivetrain will continue to work effectively.
If you ride your bike a lot, over great distances, it will be important to keep your chain well lubricated to keep the wear on the bike components down. There are many different lubes out there for this purpose but there is a runaway favourite of mine which is Finish Line Teflon Lube http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=317 . This lubricant is for use really only in the dry conditions and this may be impractical in old blighty so there's also a wet conditions equivalent: http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=1041 and at roughly 3 quid a pop, it's not gonna break the bank.

Working at the.... Bike.... wash (Seamless :D)
As important as it is to keep your chain in good condition, it is also a good idea to keep your bike relatively clean as this will prevent transfer of muck to you from the bike. A good fluid for this is the Muc Off Nano Tech bike cleaner (£5.99) : http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=520 . I really like this product because it's a no gimmicks fluid with a spray bottle container. It's really just a point and shoot system which works great if, like me, you have a busy life and just want to keep your bike in good working order.

Stop!!
On the more mechanical / physical side of bike maintenance, it's important to keep an eye on your tyres and brake pads. I'll deal with brake pads first as they're more likely to go before your tyres do ( again, like so much in this article, it depends on the type and frequency of the riding that you do). Brake pads are the traditional way to stop a bike and there are specific types of brake pads for different bikes. Mountain bikes generally have longer brake pads and road bikes have smaller pads mounted in a side-pull fashion. These can be picked up at Halfords or from Chain Reaction Cycles for little money and especially with CRC, there is a massive selection to choose from.

Tyres, again vary depending on the bike and type of riding you do. If you do a lot of mountain biking then slick tyres are not for you. Likewise, a knobby tyre on a road bike lends the it to more cyclo-cross type riding rather than a fast morning commute into the City. A good thing to watch out for with the commuter tyre is whether it has kevlar in it. Kevlar in this application is the same stuff used in bullet proof vests and will go a long way to help protect you from punctures.

Write a better life story

Ever felt so angry and impotent that you stand there fuming or rage-walk around the house, banging and slamming as you go?

Another way
Try writing. Nothing in particular, just sit, take out your notepad and write. writing about how you are feeling and what's wrong at the time is not the way to proceed here as this will just end the exercise as a short essay on expletives. Try to take a step back in your mind and consider your situation as a whole, homing in on the good. The idea of this exercise is not quantity, or quality but distraction from the thing that angered you and crystallisation of the good points of your life. Even if you were right to be angry, being so can cause you to make rash decisions which you regret later. By jotting down in a note-pad, you can focus your energy into writing and not raging, this will help calm you down so you can think clearly. This will allow you to deal with your problems much more rationally.

Exercise
Taking 20 minutes a day and doing this exercise should also help you feel more centred and less prone to raging. The exercise works by acting as a tap, through which, all of your stored stresses and aggression are released upon the page. As you're doing it with no particular direction, your hand will write what you actually feel so you'll have a better guage of how you're feeling instead of the usual mantra of "you're fine. I'm fine, everything's fine". This mantra is the least helpful thing to think of in a stressful situation as it simply delays the crash. By writing, you 'defuse the bomb' and bring the real you out on paper.

Health Benefit
I'm no doctor or psychologist but it doesn't take much common sense to realise that by regularly releasing stress on paper, as one does through sport and gym training, one can help avoid stress related illness. This will help you feel better and more productive at work and you'll achieve more in the work arena. By emptying your mind, your brain will be more still. This will allow you to see the truth of what matters to you in your life and you'll also be able to see more clearly as you de-clutter your life. Not just this, as you'll be less occupied with stress all the time, you will see a change in your outlook. Your world will become sunnier and you'll be less likely to take rain or other minor things as a personal assault on your being.

Potential Future Career
And who knows, as you engage in a daily writing exercise, you train the mind and the body so you may get a taste for writing and this could lead to a part-time writing job, bringing in extra pennies or you may write the best work for 50 years.

health