Well, things went pear shaped. Woke up on July 20th with a scratchy throat, which then progressed to a head cold which then progressed to bronchitis for the rest of the month.

Sickness in chest means zero exercise and also put an end to the diet - I didn’t gain weight, but without exercise it’s far too hard to maintain a significant calorie deficit.

Off to Malaysia in a couple of days, so will resume once I’m home.

Now that the ‘man-flu’ has finally abated, I can get back out on the bike again. I have a rule where I completely stop training once a cold gets into my chest and I don’t start again until it has completely cleared. I’ve heard first-hand accounts of people giving themselves long-term heart problems as a result of training hard when under the weather, and whilst there’s always the possibility that I wouldn’t be training that hard anyway and/or they had a more serious infection at the time than a chesty cold, to me it’s just not worth the risk. Given I’m only a hack and not cycling seriously, there’s no point stressing my body with solid training sessions when it’s already stressed trying to fight off an infection.

Here’s the result of my time off…

A week of shite weather and hectic work, followed by two weeks of a cold, leads to a 40% drop in fitness. Total distance for the month of June ended up as 158km, when even a relatively easy month would see me doing 700km+ and a decent week’s training would be pushing 300km.

I got back out on the bike a little at the end of last week to see how things were. My legs feel OK, but the lungs were a little sluggish on Thursday, but OK by Friday. It’s going to be a relatively slow build back to some semblance of fitness I think, especially with the late nights of the Tour de France just around the corner!