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Weigh in night tonight and it was a good night for me, one & a half pounds off, my lightest weight for many years. I have not yet hit the 3 stone loss mark and Christmas looms ever closer. I want to hit the three stone loss mark before Xmas and I want to still be in the 3 stone lost mark after Xmas and I don’t intend to have a starvation Christmas either.

I just don’t want a repeat of last Christmas, the diet stopped for two weeks, boy did I get a shock when I got back on the scales, I don’t want to be in that position again this year. What I have got going for me is the fact that I am now cycling and have every intention to be out on the bike as much as possible over the Xmas and New Year. Apart from the fact I enjoy it and have many areas I want to try and ride but also the exercise will help with the weight loss.

But apart from eating, there is drinking, I won’t say I have given up drinking as that makes it sound as though I have stopped drinking but I have not had a drink since May and I am not to sure what I am going to do? I have simply just held off drinking to help with the weight loss. All I can say it is going to be an interesting period.

I am going to have to try harder this week and make sure I keep on track over the weekends (normally where I go off the rails). Going to push to hit that 3 stone mark next week and then work hard to keep losing over Xmas. Going to try to go for a bike ride one night in the week at some point, even if it is only a lap around the block, it is all going to helps.

Be keen to hear from you if you are on a diet, how are you going to handle Xmas??

Well it was yesterday afternoon when I came back from riding my bike, I was determined to go out riding to help with the weight loss. I had been out Saturday and that was a bit of a slow ride as the wife was not feeling to great so I felt I needed to go out again. Well Sunday weather was miserable, high winds and plenty of rain. I wanted to try out my new jacket to see how waterproof (or not) it was so now was the ideal time. I dropped the wife and son off for a bit of xmas retail therapy and headed for the local heath. The path across the top of the heath was windy as I had expected with the rain coming in at 45 degrees to my face but once I went down the slope at the other end I was sheltered from the wind but unfortunately not the rain.

It was not long before I started to have some close encounters of the muddy kind, nearly going through a hedge on one short steep decent, then a little further on there was a tree down across the path, in fact it was propped up resting on a shed leaving enough room to ride under it, at least I did on Saturday. Sunday as I ducked under the trunk my handle bar caught a branch sending me lurching into the deep mud, if only I had known this was to be a minor event compared to what was coming.

At the bottom of one slope was what can only be described as a lake, Saturday we both managed to ride through it, but with the over night rain it was now double the size, so I headed into it and then suddenly found myself in the middle of the lake in axle deep water losing momentum due to the clay bottom, I stopped and put my foot down, boy was that water cold.

Having paddled my way out of the lake (managing to keep one foot dry-ish) I set off along the narrow sandy single track, this included riding up what can only be described as a fast flowing stream, swollen by the rain of the past few days. I was just yards from reaching the point where the track widen outs and heads for home when I found myself making a close inspection of the heathland foliage, not sure exactly what happened accept I was on the deck.

I reached the return point and decided to take an alternative route back (it meant not going down a long slope and then having to climb back up an adjacent slope). I was soon riding back across the top of the heath this time with the wind and rain at 45 degrees to my back. All that was left was the muddy area where they had laid a new water main, this meant swapping from one side of the track to the other to keep out of the worst of the mud. The next bit was like slow motion, I found myself on the wrong side of the path and in a deep puddle, suddenly my front wheel disappeared, I am flying off the bike over the handlebars and I land on my side in the middle of the muddy puddle. I was absolutely soaking wet and covered in mud, I put my hand out in front of me and that disappeared into the mud, when I pulled my hand out my glove was covered in yellow clay.

I got up and retrieved my bike, remounted and rode the final half mile back to the car, I was absolutely soaked. When I got back to the car I took my trainer off and poured the water out of it, it is still soaking wet now despite sitting next to a radiator drying out for more than 24hrs.

But best of all I enjoyed every bloody minute of it

Weigh in last night and not the result I wanted, I put a pound on. I had a feeling I might have put on but was hoping that I would of maintained, it just was not a good week for me last week, too much eating the wrong foods and not enough restraint.

Going to try hard this week to keep to the straight and narrow, I want to hit the 3 stone marker before I get into December and the only way to do that is to be good and eat the correct foods. I wanted to go for a bike ride tonight but 35mph winds and horizontal rain is not my idea on fun let alone exercise. Will keep my eye on the weather and try to escape another night this week. Weekend weather is not looking great so it is more important that I get the eating bit right.

If anybody has any spare will power please send it my way…………….

So the big lane change over on the A338 as mentioned in an earlier post happen in the early hours of Monday morning (it was in place when I went through at 5:45am), I am glad I went through early it was a total mess and it was a bigger mess in the evening rush hour. The tailbacks were so long they were blocking exit and access to roundabout on surrounding roads and the whole area became a large gridlocked car park.

Tonight on the local radio station Wave105 a local lady phoned in to the station, she had been stuck in the Bournemouth hospital car park (which is about a quarter of a mile to the east of the A338) since 3:30pm, the time she was on the radio was 5:00pm. The presenter asked on the radio that if anybody else was also stuck in the car park and was also listening to the program to give a blast on there car horn, what followed can only be called a crescendo of honking car horns.

I and I guess the thousands of other motorists who have been caught up in the farce called road works can only hope that the Dorset County council get there act together for the ramainder of these road works and when the work starts for real in the autum of 2010.

More information can be found on the following links

• Monday local newspaper coverage Monday Evening Echo
• Tuesday local newspaper coverage Tuesday Evening Echo
• The Dorset County Council latest news

I will make one correction to my previous post on the matter bureaucratic manure, I said it was local authority, when it is actually the Dorset County Council who are in charge of this work.

I would assume that the County council did speak to the local council about this work rather than just imposing it on them but hey who knows……………..

Been watching the weather like a hawk since the middle of the week as we had planned to try out a new route. But since Wednesday the weather had been forecasting a wet weekend and I am not keen on riding in the wet (don’t mind to much if it starts dry and then rains while I am out but don’t want to start in the wet).

There was one slim chance as a couple of the weather site were promising a cloudy rain free start early on Saturday with the rain moving in by midday. So I went to bed last night vowing to get up a soon as it was light and providing it was not raining going out riding on the local heath. 7:15am dawned, damp wet and miserable but no rain so I dragged my body out of bed by 8:00am (I was tired) and got the bikes ready for the off…………………….and it started raining. Due to the colour of the sky we decided to wait and see if it would stop. 45 minute later we were on our way. Apart from a couple of minor shower there was no rain, at one stage we even had blue sky!

Everything was going well until we got to the half way mark when we came across a fallen tree completely blocking our way with no direct route around it we went of in search of a new route home. What we found was one of the most enjoyable rides we have had to date, along muddy tracks, through small streams until we found ourselves back at an earlier section of our route, we had done a very large loop. In-fact this was better than our normal route and it will certainly be a route we will try again. In total we did 10.7 mile (possibly more as the gps lost the signal) and to be honest I was not in anyway tired I could of carried on riding I was that relaxed, although my stomach was saying it could do with some breakfast.

Weather permitting I will be out again tomorrow, not sure which route I will try, have a couple in mind, just want to get out and play in the mud again!!