hi james,

some dude on the 'net has emailed me saying he's got the holy grail for
weight loss. i'm a bit worried about the loss of gravity having side
effects. what should i do?

james.

hi james,

firstly, you rightly should be worried about the consequences of
removing the force of gravity from the universe. it's a very risky
business. no one really knows what might happen, perhaps another force
will take its place. imagine being electrocuted at every step you take,
or each and every time you perform any action which would otherwise be
opposing the force of gravity. not a pretty thought i think you'll
agree.

cheers,
james.


hi james,

thanks for your insightful response. i'm starting to think however you
may have jumped the gun a bit there. i don't think the dude on the 'net
has it in his power to remove the force of gravity from the
xixnxtxexrxnxextx universe, since mailing him back and enquiring
for more information about it. he claimed gravity would only be removed
from my immediate vicinity. he seemed to imply i would be within my
very own gravity-free bubble. of course now i am wondering how my
gravity-free bubble would interact with gravity, for example i wouldn't
really want to float off into space, as much of fantastical trip as it
would be, i don't fancy testing gravity-free bubbles in the silent
vacuum of deep space :-/

thanks for your help thus far,
james.


hi james,

believe it or not james, you're not the first person to contact me
worrying over the consequences of existing in a gravity free bubble.
again no one really knows what the consequences may be, at least,
no one does outside of top secret government research labs and
criminal underworld research labs. i would strongly advise you to
steer clear of these dangerous weight loss programmes, and instead try
and somehow trick the rest of the world's population into mass weight
gain so that you don't have to change yourself in order to feel slim.

regards,
james.


my dear james,

i shall never know how you came to be in a position to profer advice.
tricking the rest of the world's population into mass weight gain is
the most proposterous idea i have ever encountered as a way of
achieving weight loss. you should be ashamed of yourself. do not
contact me again.

james.

james,

please allow me to appologise, i did not mean for you to take offense
at my suggestion, many other people have taken exactly the same advice
and achieved weight loss. why do you think there are so many obese
people in the world?

regards,
james.

james,

i frankly also find your last message offensive so please do not under
any circumstances ever contact me again, despite the fact we are one
and the same person. i refuse to take any further part in this
conversation.

regards,
james.

For the past nine months or so, I have been cycling to work and back five days a week (with exceptions for injury, holiday, etc) with a minimum daily distance of around 8.5 miles.

I will usually take the shortest route on the way to work which on most days is out of necessity. Living in a town now, with a quite dense network of roads and a number of bridleways and footpaths along ridable farm tracks, there's plenty of scope for route variation depending on how much additional distance I might want to ride (and how muddy the ground is).

I have been training for the past three weeks for the Brighton Big Dog, a 6 hour mountain bike race held in the start of August. When I say training I mean intentionally setting out to achieve a particular target each week, rather than just cycling when I feel like it.

After the first week with a distance of 110 miles I expected to be improving on that in the following weeks. However, the reality of what I actually have achieved proves that goal to be a little unrealistic at this point. In the second week I only doubled my distance to an estimated 85 miles (though I had Friday off and needed to be reasonably alert for the weekend). For the third week, just passed, my distance estimate is back up to around the 100 mile mark.

I was back on the early shift this week just passed, with my first extended ride on Wednesday, at 16.5 miles incorporating various elements from two or more usual routes, and looping back past my workplace again before heading home. It was an enjoyable ride other than a puncture, and I even explored a couple of areas I had long been curious about (rather than just whizzing past them).

The following day I rode to Fowlmead and did two laps of the MTB course there. It was an overcast day, but still warm, but by the time I was heading back around 1700 it was getting quite cool. On my second lap of Fowlmead I was really feeling tired, and the way back was grim, with a head wind, facing busy oncoming traffic following the cycle path through the industrial grot of the old power station site at Richborough, and what used to be Pfizers, (now 'Discovery Park'). Once at Manston and having long grown sick of traffic (I hate cycling in busy traffic, especially when exhausted. I don't want to be seen in that miserable state) I went off road again, still into the wind, but at least with some peace away from the evils of the rush hour traffic to and from Westwood Cross.

I don't really know much about how professional cyclists train, and I'm obviously not aiming to take it that seriously, but sometimes wonder how well I'm doing as I frequently find myself feeling exhausted by the weekend and all I want to do is relax and chill out and any attempts to get me doing otherwise are met with resistance and grumpiness.

Because of that my thinking now is to be content with an average 100 miles per week and just try to maintain that for a week or two and see how it goes. I think it probably better to achieve consistency with distance each week rather than mostly shorter distances which the occasional peak distance. To do this I need to ride even when I don't feel like it, but only if I have not yet achieved my weekly distance goal.

More sleep might help.

Reminder to self: five weeks to go!