helen_goldthorpe Member

I went for a stupidly hard bike ride today on a route I'd never have attempted in the past in summer on my nice light bike, let along in freezing temperatures on my heavy winter bike. And I survived without holding the group up too much. So proud of myself!

I have the same breakfast almost every day. Lunch is the same wrap 4 days per week, soup one day per week and then we usually eat out the other two days. But in the evening I experiment with new recipes most evenings and there is relatively little repetition.

Diet is the sensible answer, because it is definitely easier to shave calories off what you eat rather than burning them off. But.... ...for me, successful weight loss always comes at times when I'm focussing on fitness goals. If I'm training properly I become more interested in fuelling properly, eating nutritious food…

I started a new job yesterday. It's in a rural location with no shops/cafes close by so you need to take lunch etc in. I was talking to a colleague about this and the fact that there wasn't even a vending machine when she told me that there is a "tuck shop" at reception so you can get chocolate/crisps etc. I said that I'd…

I need to catch up! Good month so far. A long weekend in the lake district at the start of the month, including making it up Honister without walking or stopping. Since then there has been lots of racing including winning 3 open events (and 2nd in one) and 2 club championship races. New power PBs too. I'm planning to ease…

On the actual bike, di2 or possibly tubeless tyres for not worrying too much about punctures. For cycling enjoyment, training properly with a coach and losing weight by sorting out my nutrition has made a huge difference to how good I feel on hills in particular.

I missed this thread. In the middle of race season so the mileage is down in favour of being fresh for and recovering from harder efforts. I've also started doing cross bike rides with short hard efforts in the middle, makes a change and is getting me out on some different routes. We've also been away a bit more recently…

Someone was taking a group photo on a bike ride this week. "Breathe in!... Except Helen, she doesn't need to"

Rounding off the month with 125km on mainly new roads in the Yorkshire wolds. I It's my birthday so there was new kit and a lovely lunch stop, the weather played ball too. That was nice after disappointing weather while we were on our holidays in the peak district - while we still got out we only managed 3 hour rides…

I have a long ride tomorrow so I'll wait til then to update properly other than to say... I won a race (time trial) today!

While I was losing I'd log loosely - quantities would be guesswork but I'd at least have a record of the sort of things I was eating. I'm now maintaining and on a holiday at the moment, and I'm experimenting with not logging. I'm being pretty active anyway and just eating to hunger, logging one thing a day to maintain my…

And my Garmin was playing up like that yesterday - it kept on trying to route me back to the start of the route rather than recognising that I was on course and just wanted to follow it from where I was. I gave up in the end as thankfully my OH's was behaving a bit better than mine was so I let him navigate

A mixed week for me - turbo for the first half of the week then on Thursday we headed to the peak district for a holiday. The weather has been grim but we've still got out on the bikes - 2 hours Friday, 3 hours yesterday and today we did the tour of the peak sportive (100km route) on which I think I was the fastest female…

This week I did a 60km club ride on Wednesday in snow/hail, a couple of hours in the sun on Friday evening, hid on the turbo for 2 hours yesterday because the weather was so wet then got out for a 5 hour hilly ride over to lancashire with the club today. The last 48 hours were a bit brutal so I'm a bit broken now!

May is off the mark with a speedy 135km today. I've now got an easy few days as it's my first covid jab tomorrow so I'm taking a couple of rest days just in case of side effects.

I'm also in the re-evaluate as you go camp. To be fair, I was never really doing this for a number, it was about improving sporting performance and as I've trained better and fuelled better I've hit numbers I'd have written off as unrealistic and blown straight past them. For context, in 2004 I weighed 260lb. I got down to…

About 80km solo yesterday and 101km today on a club ride. The good bike came out for a play and it felt so fast despite both being fairly hilly routes. It's strange getting used to being in a big group (14) after so long!

I'm a roadie/time triallist

Two big steps towards normal this weekend. Yesterday was my first TT of the season. It was very cold (although thankfully the race finished before it started snowing) and I didn't feel like I'd ridden particularly well so I was surprised to only be 14 seconds off the win and fastest female vet. Today was a club ride - in a…

So far this month... Zwift on Thursday and Friday, then 85km yesterday and 100km this morning. A fairly strong wind both days, but I still made it out into the Yorkshire Dales in the sunshine. Now I have my feet up watching the tour of Flanders on TV - we were meant to be there - we booked for last year, our sportive…

I was already eating fairly healthy foods, I just had an issue with portion control. For context I lost over 100lb in about 2004 by just improving my diet and exercising with no calorie counting, then put maybe 40lb back on again very slowly over the next 15 years which averages out at a couple of hundred calories a week…

I used to do it as I went along but now I do the main meals in advance then just choose (and log) my snacks during the day to fit the remaining budget. I eat a lot of the same things fairly regularly so it's easy to prelog, and if the quantities differ slightly from what I've put in I can fine tune it once I've eaten.

This is weekly weigh ins (I actually weigh daily and use a trending app which has a smoother line, but also log my Monday weight on mfp). I'm trying to maintain now, but actually still dropping a little as I try to dial in my maintenance calories.

Very different to my experience then - if I didn't eat my exercise calories I'd be struggling seriously! They're calculated accurately though (with a power meter) rather than mfp's calculations, and after over a year I know I can trust them. My advice - start eating some of them and adjust as you go.

The usual for me - zwift before work Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, 3 hours Saturday 4 hours Sunday. Yesterday was pretty hilly - looping around locally and going up and down the side of the valley in various places. Today was a longer ride out to fountains abbey via a bit of road that still has Matthieu Van Der Poel's…

I'm lucky in that as an endurance cyclist I have days where I need* to eat a lot of calories, so I tend to save my "treats" for those days. But I have found over time that even on high calorie days I'm increasingly preferring the healthier option because it makes me feel better. Nothing is off limits, but I'm naturally…

Breakfast is porridge but I vary what input in it. M-Th lunch is always the same while I'm working from home. We buy a pack of 8 wraps, chicken, houmous and salad and that does 4 days lunch for 2 of us. Friday - Sunday has a bit more variety for lunch but is often soup. Flavours vary. If we eat out it is on these days…

Summer bike. Much prettier and lighter!