The day of departure has arrived

Been putting the final touches to the training with a full on anerobic session and a circuit.

Just before doing the circuit Gary put me on his "Body SCan analysis machine" Stand on this in bare feet and hold onto handles and it sings a wee song whilst passing some sort of current through you which does a full fat, muscle weight analysis of each part of your torso.

The results showed how the training programme had affected my physical makeup. We set out to achieve 3 goals in the 6 month programme:

• Reduce overall weight (less to lug up hills - all the best climbers are light).
• Increase Leg strength
• Improve core stability (Thats your 6 pack to us vain humans)
• Reduce fat content
• Improve lung capacity
• Raise aerbic threshold - the point when you start to run out of oxygen in the muscles)
• Improve anearobic tolerance

The results from the body analysis showed that we achieved all these goals.

• Overall weight down 2.6 kg to 74.5kg
• Leg strength up to over 100
• Core stability better (not tested by machine - done by working out on core board and hemi ball
• Fat down to lowest its ever been at 13.5kg
• Lung capacity up
• Aerobic threshold now over 150 bpm
• Able to run heart rates of 175 - 180 for 30 mins now so anerobic tolerance improved

Had a bit of physio an a slight hamstring strain which is all OK now. Went for a nice massage yesterday and packed rucksack and bike.

Will do as many blogs as i can during ride with some photos. taking a heart rate monitor which should be interesting - probably scare me !! Also I have a video head cam so will put together a short video after the event and post it on u tube.

Chris