George Rickman - Keeping Our Active On

How have I kept active? Quite simply… by doing what I love, setting goals, and eating ice cream. A lot of ice cream. Initially, my goal, pre lockdown, was to compete in a mountain bike race in the alps however, those dreams were binned by the dreaded Covid-19.

I am one of the lucky people who can work from home (within reaching distance of the fridge, not so lucky). During the initial stages of lockdown I had completed the standard challenges, run 5 donate 5, the wall handstand challenge, and had started looking out for more. The local gym very kindly rented me some equipment, which I use every week, however, social media has been flooded with at-home workouts which at times I have found overwhelming. I have made a list of some of the things I wanted to achieve during lockdown and I am slowly working towards ticking them all off.

Here are some of the main goals I have set myself:

1. Get back into running. Run 5km, 10km and get my friend to drag me around a half marathon before the end of June (this is my least favourite and that's why I have enlisted the help of a friend) 2. Complete the cross country bike loop outside my house in under 40 mins 3. Take apart and refurbish some old bike wheels, mainly to learn how they work 4. Go back to where I learned to ride a bike and do all the jumps that scared me as a kid 5. One-mile run, 100 pull-ups, 200 press-ups, and 300 squats followed by another mile run, my review… not nice 6. Complete a muscle up, basically a pull-up from hell 7. Complete Pistol squat, again basically a squat but also from hell

Initially, I was planning to get more families into cycling by running a few cycling days outside of Swindon, which became a little difficult with social distancing. I did, however, manage to help and advise 4-5 family’s on what bikes would work best for them and then secured a very generous discount from a local bike shop. They are all now out and about on their bikes and have helmets that fit.

So here is my top tip, set a goal, tell a friend, you don’t know the power of peer pressure until its waiting for you at 7AM in the park.