Covid 19 - ancillary consequences

I would have initially thought 3 weeks off would be awesome but with homeschooling and wife at home working it's been shit. The only benefit is I did the decorating downstairs which I've put off for about 4 years.

Fitness is shit as it's amazing how much actually wandering about I must have done during a normal day. Even though I have a fancy turbo trainer I've done fuck all and when I did go out in the real world I put the power down on a big hill and my fucking derailleur hanger snapped. Deep joy 18 miles from home.

Hopefully they won't cancel my cortisone shot for my shoulder as the cunt has been off for 6 months now.

I’ve done a fair bit of home stuff over the last few weeks, more than I’d normally do, considering I have no interest in DIY...we wallpapered one wall last Saturday and it was a fucking nightmare!...in hindsight mistakes were made and it’d be easier next time (not that there will be anytime soon).

On the fitness side I’m walking about 4kms 4 or 5 times a week plus some body weight improv workouts in the garden using assorted garden furniture.

My other half is a veggie so I’m eating better too, I tended to eat meat most days in the office canteen....plus dessert!.....but now I can go several days without meat, now eating more beans, lentils etc ...makes it more of a “treat” when I do eat meat,p. On Thursday night I had cracking entrecôte with veg, chips and a nice dollop of Coleman’s English on the side.

It's odd that actually having the virus and being ill makes lockdown easier. It's just like when you're ill normally.

I was doing daily exercise on the eliptical cross trainer before I got symptoms, and was doing a load of cooking too, but that had to stop when I started coughing.

I'm actually dreading my first cycle ride when all this is over, I reckon I'll struggle to do 10 kms. All my training since Xmas down the drain. At least being ill put me off beer, until yesterday I'd hardly had any alcohol for a coupe of weeks.

Now I've started getting better it's beginning to get more boring. We've been doing stuff around the house too, but living in a 10th floor apartment, it gets a bit limited. There's loads of stuff I'd do to my car and bike if I could, but the garage is communal so legally out of bounds without a good reason.

I should be resuming working from home on Monday (I had last week on holiday because if I didn't use up my days from lasy year, I would have lost them), but my kids spilled a glass of water on my work laptop and it died.... I'm going to be really popular when I call IT on Monday...

Bastard virus even took away my will to do that... Maybe that should be added to the W.H.O official list of symptoms. 

Nice one Edmund.

I have to admit that getting back into the cycling wasn't as hard as I'd feared. I thought it was going to be like when I started back in December all over again, but within a week I was doing personal records even on inclines and feeling good.

I never set out to get really fit, so I'm not going crazy about it, I just wanted to have a healthy hobby to keep my mind off smoking, but I am kind of at a crossroads... I've always been skinny, 62kgs was my max weight for ages, about 9 st 10lbs. Then I went on holiday to England last August for three weeks, didn't smoke (wife hates it, kids thought I'd given up) and I pigged out, fish and chips, Cornish pasties, Curry, good Chinese, Thai, proper beer etc. Went home having gained about 3.5kgs nearly a stone. And it stayed there. Up till Christmas I stayed the same, even though I went back to smoking at work and I just thought that was the "new me".
Then when I got sick I didn't drink any beer for weeks, nor ate snacks, nor did any exercise and I lost a couple of kilos. So I thought I'd try to keep it that way, but I just keep losing the weight as I cycle more, my little podgy gut has gone and I'm back to 62kgs again now, but I don't really want to lose any more. It looks like they are going to make Madrid more cycle friendly because the current situation has brought loads of people into the city on bikes, and I don't want to miss out.

How should I keep increasing my cycling (distance and pace) even if not to an amazing standard, but not lose any more weight? I don't want more muscle or any vain Iannone type shit, just want to stay as I am.

Fuck sake, I couldn't cycle at that speed just now.

Some going Eddie, you bastard. I've been out a fair bit but just not seeing any improvement. My 25 miler along the canal is taking me 2hrs 15min. A few years ago I had it down to 1hr 35min. Just not feeling the motivation to push myself. Might get a GPS unit or even just a speedo. Makes a difference when you've got a big fat number in front of you telling you how fucking slow you're going.

Weight loss is odd in my experience. As I said on the Doohan thread I went bonkers for weight loss in 2007 and lost 2 stone in 3 months. The 1st month was disappointing as I didn't seem to get anywhere then suddenly I lost a load. I was miserable stuff though. Tuna, cottage cheese, soya nuts and as a treat I used to allow my self 100cals of weight watchers biscuits a day. Add an hours exercise, usually cycling on top of that and it did the trick. Once I'd lost all the fat I then started the weights and did one day cycling, one day weights and eating more but only probably slightly in surplus.

One benefit of lockdown was I put a load of time into VR sim racing and have got fairly quick. Near the top of time trial tables in a couple of them. I should have been a F1 driver as I can drive anything with downforce quick as fuck in the sim world. Sadly my racing is a bit gung-ho and not appreciated. Going to perhaps spunk my money on a better graphics card and one of those expensive direct drive steering wheels for total immersion. Goodbye real world.