snow!

Today was earmarked for a nice hilly 50 mile run but snow laden clouds had a different idea and I awoke to a blizzard...  Total white-out. I have however managed to craft a rudimentary handle for the broken turbo in much the same way as a neanderthal might approach the task... it's not pretty but it works.  for now.

Been doing my research and have been reading up on nutrition, bikes, training... information overload to be honest but getting a handle on it.  Nutrition wise with the holidays approaching I'm going to be realistic and try to limit the food and booze intake (i.e whisky instead of beer, mince pies I can grudginly do without...) but my overall goal is to drop back down to an optimal weight of 10 stone/65kg for my 5'9'' height.  I'm currently at about 11 and a half (about 73kg) after almost 2 years of pretty sporadic exercise and little by way of routine thanks to several factors such as moving country/city several times over this period (cerveza, siesta, fiesta when working in Spain was great for the soul but terrible for the waist line), medical issues and existential conflicts so my once rather bemuscled frame is looking decidedly slacker than I would like and I feel sluggish.

I'm not overly concerned about losing the weight as I'll certainly be spilling the kilojoules onto the road or on the turbo in the interim and a balanced diet and some self control over Christmas should do the rest (1kg a month? naive? maybe...).  My budget won't really allow for expensive dietry supplements however so I may have to do some DIY in that regard also by sourcing the ingredients in bulk and home-baking and brewing, which being a practical sort of chap is not a problem as long as it has the desired effect!  I'll be staying away from any Spanish steaks though...

Logistics-wise I've found this excellent free guide to the Etape-dowloadable as a PDF for free here at tourdefrancetips.com by a seasoned Etape-er which has been great-thanks!   I've found some cheap lodgings for the duration so all good there... now just need to get down to business and get miles into the legs-go away snow!!!