Lost Time

My training schedule for Ride London100 which I am doing for the mental health charity Mind  in August has taken a severe hit. A combination of deep snow, temperatures continually below zero both day and night, interspersed with fog, mists and blizzards has kept me off the bike.
In the last 2 weeks I have only managed 100km of cycling with 600m climbing.

The vital statistics tell a very sorry tale

Total distance  = 272km

Total Ascent  = 2059m

Longest Ride = 58.3km

The only positive sign is that my swimming , which I have taken up in order to help improve my aerobic capacity is going much better than expected and the yearly goal of swimming 25km should easily be achieved as I have completed 10km already.

When cycling it was brought forcibly home to me that I needed to take on fuel  during the journey  ( hence the idea behind Cycling Food on the Go, Recipes for Success ) and so my total daily calorie intake was increased quite markedly. With exercise now a virtual memory I have managed to reduce calorie intake and weight is remaining stable at 75kg.

The problem of course is that at my age, making up for Lost Time becomes increasingly difficult.

Thinking about Lost Time makes you think of times past, the lost time before i discovered Cycling as a hobby. And perhaps it is that feeling of opportunities missed that is behind my enthusiasm for retro things and the love of hand built bikes made out of Reynolds steel, the aesthetics of beautiful handcrafted lug work, the history behind the traditional names such as Campagnola. 

When I retired I bought both a camera and a bike, never having been involved with either before, and as with cycling, in photography I am drawn to the era before digital when Ansell Adams created pictures using his Zonal System

And so this year, as well as cycling, I am aiming to have a photographic project. The theme will be cycling and all the images will be in black and white. 

Retro World - living the dream. Reynolds steel, down tube shifters, 27inh wheels, the sort of machines ridden by the legends. Black and White photography, zonal schemes.  And then in the tea shops you can believe that you are chatting to Ansell and Tommy. Discussing the developing cocktails and exposure times used in  film, sharing the pain of that last great mountain.

For a while, you too can be a legend, just living the dream of retro time.