Fort William's fantastic fit club

I've been working on a project in Fort William so later on yesterday I drove up the A82 and battled through the snow to my hotel for the evening.

The gym at the hotel is excellent and having stayed a couple of times I've been lucky enough to meet a couple of guys - Gillie and Ki Ki. Gillie was really good to me a couple of weeks ago showing me where teh spin classes are held and where the gym was. We blethered a bit about our training goals and yesterday when I rolled in sure enough Gillie was spinning on a bike. He glanced round and shouted a welcome.

I jumped on to the running machine and knocked out another 30 minutes of ascending intervals. I was up to temperature quickly and really enjoyed the run. After I finished on the bike, Gillie introduced me to a couple of the other guys in the gym. It was great and they were all very friendly. Ki Ki aka Chris turned out to be the local Free Church minister. What a fab guy. Really enjoyed blethering with him as we melted slowly under the pressure of a huge climb. It was 35 minutes well spent and my tee shirt was soaking.

The work out was a cracker - inproved vastly by the scales in the gym - I weighed 13 stone. My delight was huge - a massive 8lb weight loss - great news until I discovered that the scales weighed 7lb heavy. Oh well......

Tonight myself, the Bigman and Fit One went along to meet with Ian. He took a few hours out of his time to help us with the basics of bike mechanics. It was a fab night and I for one learned loads. I'm sure that we all have benefited massively from tonight and in many respects I hope I don't have to use my newly learned skills but if I do at least I'm better prepared.

Next week's session is all about quick fixes for things that might go wrong whilst out on the race. Really looking forward to it.

Tomorrow it's back onto the treadmill and spin bike! Just over 4 weeks to go and feeling fit and healthy.....