Training week 1

So the past week has been a bit of a introduction to training. I went out 3 times on my bike and did about 90 miles. The first ride was a bit rubbish and made me realise I'm going to have to put in a lot of effort in the coming weeks. But it was ok as it was my first road ride or first long period of aerobic excersize for well over a year. And when I put it like that, I could be doing a lot worse.

Here is what my routes have been so far. On my 2nd and 3rd ride I tried to use the 'map my ride' app for the I phone but unfortunately I have been a complete noob! My phone ran out of battery on ride 2. And ride 3, I thought I had pressed record to only find out when I got home that I had only pressed the settings option.... :/
I mapped the routes out the best I could on google maps.

Pretty Simple 20 mile route, not many hard climbs.,but the wind was pretty strong. this took me about 1h 15mins

This is one of the hardest rides of done in recent memory. Its very hilly and about 35-40 miles and i really tried to push up the hills. im not sure how long this took because im not 100% on the time i left but was about 2h 30mins.

This 17ish mile route is just easy. all slightly up hill on the way out and downhill on the way back. This took
an hour as i was just doing an easy recovery ride as the route the day before kinda hurt.

On days When I haven't been on my bike I have been at the gym working on the guns.
Up until now I have been going to the gym 5 times a week but with a totally different goal. I wanted to get bigger muscles, gain some weight and lose the belly that I had accumulated from being in a desk job. The problem that i had got into, as im sure many do with a desk job, is you get so caught up burning your eyes and brain out looking at a screen all day that once you finish work, all you want to do is get home switch off and watch a film or play on the ps3. Well thats how it was for me anyway.

But gone are those days of being a lazy slob.... And so have the days of wanting to become muscle bound and look like Arnie! Well that was never the plan but I did gain 4kg and my body fat percentage dropped quite a bit and i was very happy with my progress. And now i feel like i am better prepared as i have a good base strength..but what do i know.

So now my new goal is to become fit enough to actually race throughout a cyclo cross series, hopefully peaking around the time of the Champs. Rather than just being fit enough to participate. I'm not really about the participation of things, I like to win. Little to no point in doing things unless you want to win I think. The bad thing about that, is that I feel I am going to have to get used to being thrashed for a while... Safe in the knowledge that I'm letting them win untill champs time :)

Ok iv gone on a fair bit now. But i guess it is my first training post so i have to give a bit of an intoduction. I have also probably given away my race plan but only time will tell if it is my plan or not.??