Those of you who know me in real life will know that in the last 2 years, I have put a ton of weight on. I’ve went from 13 stone to 16 stone, and down to 15.5 since moving out of my parents house in June 2011.

Two years on I’m very unhappy with my look and its time something was done about it. I got myself a road bike last year but have only recently got into going out regularly. I always had little flurries of motivation, that usually subsided after a week or so. I needed a target, something to train for, so I entered a race. I’m fairly capable of cycling the distance, but I really need to work on upping my average speed. Over 30 miles I can currently push out 13mph. I need to do around 18mph over 47 miles. I have a lot of work todo, but I’m looking forward to the challenge. I already feel better for getting out on the bike more and hopefully my weight should drop with a sensible diet. Here’s one of my rides from last week, which is close to where the race takes place:

I’m looking forward to fully commiting to my training now that my exams are finished and looking forward even more to getting back down to a good weight. I’ll be using my blog as a diary, so expect more posts in the coming weeks!

Companies that make it super hard for customers to leave are super irritating. I don’t mind it when I’m offered an incentive to stay (maybe a free trial of some premium features, or a discount) but when I just want to cancel my account I should be able to, without any fuss being made. When trying to cancel with a certain online game rental service (coughLoveFilmcough) they would offer me several other packages, in fact they told me they were moving me onto another package. This was stupid as my reason for cancelling was due to a broken Xbox. I was told several times my plan was cancelled when actually it was temporarily suspended.

I now hold LoveFilm in contempt and mention my experience to friends when they talk about signing up. Had the let me go first time round, there would be no issue.

Companies, sometimes its just best to let your customers go.