Swimming and Cycling

Now before I start I need to make clear that none of this is particularly a boast - I'm not trying to set records or brag about how I've run back-to-back marathons in under 10 hours. For the last 12 months though I've been measuring both my cycling and swimming activity. Not for anything in particular, but just to see how far I go. I've got a fancy GPS thing on my phone which makes measuring cycling easy (but obviously just have to count laps in the pool).

I'm fortunate as I live only a stones throw from work (just over 3.1 kilometres to be exact). It means my commute is a dream compared to some who sit on congested roads for hours with nothing but the car stereo for company. As a result I've been cycling in (on Amy's bike!) to my work for the last 3 years. I don't really consider it exercise as much as just a form of (cheap and of course environmentally good) transport.

Similarly fortunately a new swimming pool opened half way along my cycle route to work. When we moved to Canberra it used to be a dark and dingy swimming pool with rust falling off the ceiling into the water (I'm not exaggerating) but they knocked the old eyesore place down and built a shiny new 25 metre pool in its place. It seems like Canberra's best kept secret - sometimes I'm the only one in there and sometimes the water is almost too warm to swim in (like a bath).  I took out a 20 swim pass (but I'm sure I've long since exhausted that but nobody on reception seems to know or care). Oh well.

Anyway, here are my stats;

In the last year I've ridden a touch under 643 kilometres (or 400 miles). It's about a fifth of the Tour de France and I did it over a year rather than 21 days. I also didn't take a single anabolic steroid on my way round. It's also worth noting that this is only my commute - apart from the odd trip to the shops I don't really go out riding. Canberra is full of crazy cyclists who knock of this kind of distance in a weekend, but I've kind of managed this without trying.

Similarly with my swimming I managed 31 kilometres (just short of the 35 kilometres which would have got me across the English Channel (had I had 12 months to complete the swim). Again this was really without much effort. You can see there's assorted troughs in the bar charts representing times when (cycling) it was probably raining and (swimming) I probably had a cold.

I'm going to endeavour to keep it all up and share even more monumental stats in the next 12 months!!