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This post is part of a continuing series which charts how I gained weight and then lost it.  If you would like to read the story from the beginning, these posts are being indexed on the About Marchie page, as and when they are published.

I’ve covered a fair few miles on my bike since I bought it in 2009.  I use it to get around town, but I’ve done quite a fair amount of longer distance riding, too.  Manchester to Chester and back is a journey I’ve done many times now – the Cheshire Cycleway provides a scenic route on quiet lanes that is a very pleasurable ride.

Puente Colgante between Portugalete and Getxo, near Bilbao

I’ve done a couple of tours with Jenny; we cycled the Lleyn Peninsula and from Santander to Bordeaux in 2010, in the spring of 2011 we did a lap of Anglesey.  These are great fun – the journey is the holiday.  You see everything – the world doesn’t whizz past in a blur, yet you can cover long distances if you need to.  You can plan if you want to, or not!  Either way, it’s always an adventure.  You get to meet people – it’s different, people are interested in what you are doing.  If you end up lost, people will always try to help you.  There’s always a story to tell when you’re done.

Start of the Staffordshire Peak Super-Grimpeur Audax Ride, August 2010

I’ve also taken part in some longer day rides – I’ve done one sportive, the 2010 Fred Whitton Challenge, however I’ve done many more Audax rides.  I like Audax rides more than sportives – the whole idea is that it’s a challenge, but not a race.  There is a time limit to complete the course, however there is also a minimum time – there are no winners; those who complete the ride are regarded equally, so long as they complete the ride before the cut-off point.  The Audax rides are cheap, organised but with a large element of self-sufficiency.  The distances involved vary from 50km “introductory rides” to anything up to 1200km or 1400km!  The furthest I have done is a 300km ride from Poynton in Cheshire to Newtown in Wales and back, which start at 11pm.  After this, I slept for 18 hours straight!  In either case though, you do get to see some fantastic scenery!

On the Staffordshire Peak Super-Grimpeur, August 2010

So, in terms of weight loss, I don’t know how much these rides have really done for me.  I think a daily routine of cycling into work rather than driving or taking public transport would be more beneficial for weight loss than the occasional long distance ride like these.  Having said that, if it’s something you can commit the time to cycling these kinds of distances regularly, you will undoubtedly see some weight loss benefits.  For me, these kinds of rides are good fun – I don’t do them with weight or fitness in mind, I just do them because I enjoy them.  However, you can go on a touring holiday and eat like a king every night, without having to worry that you’ll have put on half a stone by the end of it!

Cotes de Boeuf in Bordeaux, August 2010

This post is part of a continuing series which charts how I gained weight and then lost it.  If you would like to read the story from the beginning, these posts are being indexed on the About Marchie page, as and when they are published.

My Bike (laden with touring gear)

Jenny had got her bike in January of 2009 in order to start riding to work rather than getting the tram.  I encouraged Jenny in this, however, I myself had not cycled since I was a teenager!  This changed when I borrowed a bike off Gwion while visiting Byrdir in the summer. Jenny and I cycled down country lanes, down the beach, round the town and even on main roads!  We did 30 miles that day and it was absolutely fantastic!  I went out and bought a bike the very next week.

I felt that it was important to buy a bike that was fit for what I wanted to do on it.  I believe that a lot of people buy bikes that they end up hardly ever using, because they buy the wrong kind of bike.  A full-suspension mountain bike quickly loses its appeal when you’re mainly riding it on roads (a lot of unnecessary weight and wasted effort); equally, a carbon-fibre road bike might go like the wind, but you can’t carry a load on it.  So, I plumped for a touring bike – designed to ride on the roads, but robust enough to carry lots of luggage and it can cope with some light off-road riding too.  After two years of heavy use, I would have to say that I am happy with my choice – it is something I will write about in more detail in the future.  In the meantime, if you’re looking for some good ideas about what to look for in an everyday bike, you can’t go far wrong with this: http://lovelybike.blogspot.com/p/bicycles-for-everyday.html.

Riding a bike is an awesome way of getting around.  It is by far the most efficient form of travel ever invented and it is a huge amount of fun.  I started to use the bike for travelling pretty much anywhere; going grocery shopping a few miles away at The Unicorn in Chorlton, playing 5-a-side with my mates ten miles away in Altrincham, going to see my parents five miles away in Middleton – heck, on a couple of occasions when I’ve had a spare afternoon, I’ve ridden forty-five miles to Chester!  Cycling is quick, cheap and convenient – it’s the best form of personal transport.

The other thing cycling is great for is losing weight, which is after all the point of this series of articles.  There’s a little poster on our fridge these days that has a drawing of a bike and a car on it; underneath the bike is written “this one runs on fat and saves you money”, while beneath the car it reads “this one runs on money and makes you fat”.  How true!

This post is part of a continuing series which charts how I gained weight and then lost it.  If you would like to read the story from the beginning, these posts are being indexed on the About Marchie page, as and when they are published.

On a couple of occasions in the past, I have tried my hand at running.  Back at school, there was a race called the Gatley which took place at the end of the Lent term.  I ran the race in my final year, finishing last.  Still, I was quite proud of my achievement; I had taken part and I had finished, unlike some.

I have ventured out for runs of my own accord, but these were very much occasional rather than as a matter of routine.  I would sometimes go for a jog around the woodland near my parents house, or run to or from lectures at university.  Indeed, not long after moving into our flat, I went for a morning run around the canals in the city centre – a distance of just over two miles.  It is a feat that I didn’t bother to repeat for some months afterwards!

What changed?  Simple, really – I met other people who ran, too.  My supervisor, Craig – fifty-something, yet had taken up running not long previously.  He wasn’t breaking any records, but he was enjoying himself.  If he can do it, why can’t I?

So I started running places.  I explored my city – I followed the canals to see where they went to, and turned round when I felt that I had had enough.  It turns out that one of these canals provides a pretty good route to the City of Manchester Stadium, so I started running to the match.  I ran to nearby parks and ran around them, then home again.  I ran to places of interest, just to take a look at them.

After around six or nine months of doing this, it turned out that I’d actually become quite fit.  10 kilometres was a distance that, in the past, I simply would not have contemplated running.  I had no idea just how far it was.  Yet through selling my car and walking or running to places, I discovered that, for me, 10 kilometres really isn’t that far at all.  It was a comfortable distance to run.

I decided to enter the Great Manchester Run, a 10-kilometre running event that takes place in my city each year.  Since then, I have entered many more races and joined a running club.  I’ve never been close to winning any races, but for me it is not about winning – it’s about the challenge of beating my own records, seeing how I have improved (or not!) and being involved in the excitement of an event!

So, once again: Change – start running regularly, a couple of times per week.  Discipline – keep it up!  Patience – it does take time, but you will get better and you will get fitter.

This post is part of a continuing series which charts how I gained weight and then lost it.  If you would like to read the story from the beginning, these posts are being indexed on the About Marchie page, as and when they are published.

With moving home, changing jobs and no longer having access to a car, the most viable option for my daily commute was to… walk!  This was not because walking was my only option; there is a free bus service that runs every six minutes which goes more or less door-to-door, however I have never used this service – to be honest, I have never even considered using it!  I expect that the wait for the bus, the circuitious route the bus takes (necessitated by the available road routes through Manchester City Centre) as well as the regular stops for both letting people on and off the bus and for traffic lights means that the journey is probably slower than walking in any case.

My most direct route to work involves a walk that is 1.3km in distance. It takes me between fifteen and twenty minutes to walk this far at a normal walking pace.  Personally, I don’t believe this is a great deal of time at all; I would imagine that this is the case for most people.  So, walking a moderate distance of around 2.6km became part of my normal daily routine.

When I started walking to get to places, an amazing thing happened – I realised that the world in which I live really isn’t that big at all!  Pretty much everything I need in a typical day (place of work and grocery store) is within a fifteen minute walk of where I live.  Furthermore, rather than arriving at work tired, still picking the sleep from my eyes, I was arriving at work fresh and alert, ready for the day.

Previously, car ownership had warped my view of the world.  For example, when I was living and working with my parents, out in suburbia rather than in the city centre, the most direct walking route between home and the office was 1.5km in distance – only slightly further than my journey to work today.  The distance to my nearest grocery store/supermarket back then?  0.7km.  Zero-point-seven kilometres.  That is less than ten minutes walk in either direction.  However, to my eternal shame, I could probably count on one hand the number of times I chose to walk either of these journies when I owned my car.

Worryingly, in the UK, this kind of behaviour is increasingly normal.  It is now normal for people to drive distances that could have been walked by the time the car has been manouevred out of the garage, or by the time a parking space has been found near the destination.  It is increasingly normal for people to be fat or obese, too.  Coincidence or correlation?

My walk to and from work burns around 150 extra calories when compared with sitting on a bus or behind the wheel of a car.  150 calories is not really a great deal of energy – it’s about half a Mars bar.  However, with all other things being equal, 150 calories a day starts to add up; my walk to and from would potentially account for half a kilo of weight loss each month. 

Change: walk to work and the shops rather than drive.  Discipline: do it every day, even if it’s cold, wet and windy (this is what coats are for).  Patience: walking on its own won’t bring about significant weight loss quickly, however, over time, it will.