The second of my weekly accountability posts for the year of 2018.
Yet another week of particularly uninspiring riding but the short days and cold weather is still sucking the life out of my ambition. Nonetheless, a bigger week than the previous. I did 177.3km (110 miles) which was mainly made up of commuting to and from one of my super part-time jobs. I greatly enjoy riding home past Buckingham Palace, along the Embankment following the Thames and then dropping the hammer on all the other commuters for a bit of high octane racing through the rush hour traffic. I definitely got some good workouts in - even if they were all dictated by traffic lights.
I also did a couple of sporadic hours of courier work. I even went to a nearby town outside of London, called Chelmsford, where me and a friend had a go. It was a lot quieter than we were expecting and I doubt we'll be going back. It was nice to have had an experience different to the regular London madness though. A lot more chilled out there.
Chelmsford Cathedral
On the bikepacking racing front, the full list of riders names was finally announced for the pan-Australia unsupported bicycle race I am doing in March. Got a couple of names I recognised on there but I don't think there are any pros. It should be a very interesting race. It's got me brainstorming all the specific things I will need to bring and how I'm going to manage things like hydration and electricity whilst on the road. I've created quite a list of bike parts that I need to buy and I've slowly started ticking them off.
I also took the initiative to find as many of the other racers on Strava (a sort of social media for athletes) and created a group for us to compare training. Some people had pretty common names so it was a bit of a slog but I'm happy that we've got almost 30 of the racers in there now. It should give me a bit of a kick in the ass to get some more miles in my legs before the big start.
Check out the Indian Pacific Wheel Race roster: indianpacificwheelrace.com/roster
You can keep track of the IPWR racer Strava leaderboard here: strava.com/clubs/ipwr2018
My Steemit activity dropped over the last week. I just hadn't been feeling the drive to post things. I've been more focused (and mildly panicking) about the IPWR. I've also barely been posting on Facebook or Instagram. This may be due to working a lot more than the previous week. Who knows. It's a real flow I seem to get into and I guess I just had my energy diverted elsewhere in the last seven days.
I feel like I've worked somewhat towards this goal. I worked in a new city, which meant learning new roads, interacting with people from new pick-up spots and generally getting out of my comfort zone a bit.
I've booked myself in for a dinner with DataDash (a popular crypto YouTuber you may have heard of) whilst he's visiting London on a world tour. Usually, I would have shied away from events like these but I felt like it would be a good chance to expand my socialising ability. So, if anyone is going to the meal or the event this week then say hi if you manage to recognise me!
I've also been quite fired up watching manifestation videos too so I decided to send some messages to cycling product producers / suppliers asking about potential sponsorship for the IPWR. I'm keeping my thoughts positive and hoping something comes of it. If not, it's not the end of the world. Everything else I've ever done before in the cycling world was off my own back.
A bit of a sad week for crypto. A lot of FUD coming out which cause a heavy hit to the markets. Things seemed to be looking up by the end of the week though and somehow my portfolio went green again.
Personally, I'm going to be selling some of my alt coins for Bitcoin. It's found support on the $12-13,000 level many times now since the fall from the $20,000 all-time high. That, and Bitcoin having a very low market dominance, is pointing towards Bitcoin going on a nice rally pretty soon. Only time will tell. Another thing to note is that I cashed out some crypto for some shiny new bike parts. Not bad, eh.
Happy to report I'm still going strong. Diverted focus and ambition for the future helps to forget any urges. Now I've broken the 2-week barrier things should start to get a lot easier. It really isn't as hard as people make out unless you have a serious problem. Until next week, I hope you found some inspiration or some other positive emotion from this post. I'm tagging with 'weeklyaccount' so anyone else can do the same accountability posts as me and we can feed off of each other's goal-setting and achieving. Peace out! ~ ~
Shoot me an up-vote if you felt inspired by this content and leave a comment if you want to chat. Re-steems are hugely appreciated! I'm always looking for new motivational and adventurous people to follow on here.
Much love,
Joseph
