Team Cycling Plus – Sam Shaw
khodgins | Blog, Cycling Plus | 20/08/2010 11:35am
Team Cycling Plus will be updating you each week with the highs and lows of their training as part of the team. This week Sam’s training cranks up a gear, and he sets himself a firm weight loss target…
Team member: Sam Shaw
29 year old Sam who lives in Stirling weighed in at 20stone in 2006. But through discovery of his love of bikes he has shed over 6stone and is still losing. Beginning with tentative 5km commutes, working up to include an 18km detour with 360m climbs, and now braving sportives and time trials, Sam’s newfound obsession has changed his life. His goals are to get down to 13stone and wear lycra with pride.
This week has been so much better than the last few weeks. I started feeling strong on the bike last week and it showed in my rides this week. I had a good commute on Monday but was in Lancaster for work on Tuesday and had fish and chips for lunch (a rare treat to get mushy peas as the local chippys in Scotland don’t do them!) so I decided on the way home to go to the Stirling Bike Club chain gang in the evening to burn off the calories I’d consumed – I seem to remember scoffing a chocolate bar too! I got home at 6.30pm with enough time to grab a jersey and got half way to work then realised I’d locked my bike in the office, along with my keys! My wife was pretty surprised to see me slope in with a long face and I spent the rest of the evening pondering the missed ride.
On Wednesday I did some sprint intervals on my journey to and from work but by the evening I was dying for some miles so made a commitment to get up at 6am and do a 30+ mile loop into work. It’d felt like ages since I’d done a really good training ride into work and I wanted to try out Ben’s new training plan where I keep cadence above 90rpm as I usually average mid-low 80’s. It was such a good feeling doing just under a couple of hours on the bike in the morning. The route I did was 35miles and included some good hill climbing, just what I’m going to need for the 2,600m ascent in the Ken Laidlaw Sportive I’m doing on the 22nd of August.
On Saturday I went out with a friend who’d not ridden for a while. Ben’s training plan also included a 3 hour ride with a slightly lower average cadence so I’ve got to confess that I tricked my mate Colin on the distance; I plotted the course from where we would meet to the cafe at the end, both of which are a good few miles from our respective homes! We had a great ride though and I managed to finish strong by doing a 5min time trial simulation keeping around a 25mph pace on my way home from the point where Colin and I parted.
I’m looking forward to a productive week next week, doing 3 or 4 x 20+ mile commutes to work for my final preparation for the Ken Laidlaw. I’m also planning on doing the chain gang on Tuesday night as I feel that it really gave me a spike in my training the last time I did it. I’m also planning on getting back on the food wagon and lose the last stone I have to drop to get to my goal weight of 12st 6lb. There – I’ve said it – no going back now!
Who are Team Cycling Plus?
Team Cycling Plus powered by Verenti are readers Andy Ward, Kay Bowen, Malcolm Ratcliffe and Sam Shaw. We’ll be following them in the magazine for the next few months as they train towards their personal cycling goals under the guidance of Team Wiggle’s Ben Simmons and we will be publishing their weekly trials and tribulations here too. For regular updates check our twitter page twitter.com/cyclingplus and the Team Cycling Plus facebook page.
This entry was posted on Friday, August 20th, 2010 at 11:35 am and is filed under Blog, Cycling Plus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
