264. I am old but at least I am slow!

Over the weekend I entered my first race in 20 years. I forgot how much they hurt. Check out the heart rate. After being crushed by pretty much everyone Stupid Bike sees me suffering away for the last half mile. Tells me that there is someone in my class about 30 seconds behind me. The guy immediately catches me at the top of the last hill. After hearing about every 3rd word Bob said I set off to catch this guy. I got to him just before he pulled off the course by the Finish line. Heart Rate 183. Guess he was not in my class just pre riding? Then again he looked like he could have been. Clydesdale's are are not the toughest group to pick out of a line up. I had a good time. The course was fun and so was everyone at the race.

Sunday we went for a ride and I had nothing. I really mean nothing. Stupid Bike had to come back and look for me. He and Ken feared that I had taken a massive soil sample. Which has been known to happen. I took a turn headed the wrong way and and had to find my way back to the main trail. Thanks for checking on me I am just slow. I rode 14 miles Sunday. Boo made it 17 and the rest of the group probably rode 30.

If you noticed my weight on the Title I gained 11 lbs in 3 days. How is this even possible? I think I must be sick or something. Hopefully it will go away in a day or two. I did eat BBQ, several Bagels a few Cinnamon Bears covered in Chocolate. But 11 lbs? That is like 38500 calories not to mention the couple thousand that I burned off riding. If this continues I will need to change sports. Think Sumo.

253. I bailed hard this morning.

I started out my morning making lunch for Lyssa and you know what the Doritos were just too much for me today. So far I have had a hand full of Doritos and a Big Steak Breakfast Burrito from Del Taco plus 2 cups of coffee and some creamer. I do not think I will go completely nuts but I have started to slide down the slippery slope.

We are headed down to the Cholla tonight. Since I have decided to eat I think that I may even ride in the beginner 40 plus class. If the Clydesdale's are only doing one lap then I will hit the big class. At 254 I am still 34 lbs over the weight minimum. Sunday Boo and I are going to go ride Gooseberry. It will be the first time he has ever ridden slick rock and the first time I have ever ridden the Goose. Somehow he still just makes me too nervous when we ride anything near cliffs so I have stayed away from Moab. From what I understand this will probably scare the crap out of me. You know the typical 14 year old who has the attention span of a gnat? Well that is him. When he was about 8 we were riding on a bike path that had a raised wooden section. It was about 3 feet off the ground and about 4 or 5 feet wide. Well he rode right off the edge on one of the turns. I asked him what happened and he said he was looking at his foot and just went off the edge. Lucky for him it was just soft wet goo where he went over. No harm other than some muck stuffed in the helmet vents.

I will probably still diet next week but I was off the program starting Tuesday so this is not the end of the world. I lost 29 lbs in the last 35 days. I will keep posting my weight on all of my blog entries and hopefully I will have some cool photos from the race and Gooseberry.

257 Still losing weight?

So I guess it is good that I am still losing weight. It has really slowed down though. I went from losing 1.5 lbs a day down to losing about 1/2 pound per day. At 257lbs I figure I am somewhere between "Big Daddy" and "Roseanne". When I started all this I was King Kong carrying Oliver Twist so it has gotten better. Last Friday I weighed in at 261 so I guess that losing 4lbs is not too bad but I really had expected more. I have no intention of quitting and I will follow the diet through to the end. My last day in this 40 day period will be on April 7th. Anyone interested should be able to find me at Sweet Home Chicago Pizza or maybe Lone Star. Either way you will see a sight to behold and I would not recommend getting in the way of a Fat Man who has starved himself for 40 days. Things could get ugly. I have been craving pizza and burritos and not necessarily separately. Somehow a Lone Star Chili Verde and a Kitchen Sink Pizza sounds really good. Maybe a nice large picture of something light like an Oatmeal Stout to wash it down. I am so screwed. Honestly I will probably eat a something I should not but I am hopeful that I will not have the problems I am suffering through on the bike once I get some food back in my system. Last time I put in an hour I came home and felt awful. I immediately had to lay down and then I slept for 2 hours. When I woke up I still felt like road kill.

OK Whine over. I am done.. Time to shut up and tough it out.

258 MS150 route

Looks like they have posted the route. I think it is the same as last year. Though I am not sure because I started late and finished late. I just followed the notes on the road and well rode. Saturday I will ride the 100 mile route. Sunday we will probably ride the 75 mile route. There is also a 40 mile route that may become more appealing. You never know how you will feel the day after riding a century. I have done several and each one I usually bonk at about 80 miles no matter what I eat or how I hydrate. This year I am determined to ride it fast. If I can ride it in under 6 hours I should be able to avoid the bonk. Or at least that is my thought 3 months ahead of the ride. My company does the ride and my wife and son want to do the ride as well. Susan will probably ride 40 miles on both days. Then again she is stubborn and may decide to ride the whole thing. It will depend on the number of miles she can get in by mid June. Hopefully I can ride with the Revolution guys. I will probably have to ride with my company on Saturday but Sunday I should be able to don the blue flame jersey and ride with the team.

259 Plateau?

So Saturday morning I weighed myself and I still weighed 261. This is 3 or so days with no weight loss. To say I was disappointed is an understatement. So I sent a text message to my dietitian. Sheri sends me back instructions to eat nothing but 6 apples. Have you ever tried to eat only apples for a day? If so you know the hell it is to get past the 4th apple. I never made it.

The other issue I was having was ..well being"regular". She had a solution for that too. "Smooth Move Tea. I drank the tea as prescribed at 9 pm and you are supposed to wait for 8 to 12 hours. Well this stuff should not be called "Smooth Move". I can think of several better names. Morning Sprint, Morning Thunder or Super Cramp would all be better names. I hope to never go through that again.

The good part is that I woke up Sunday morning weighing 2 lbs less than Saturday and somehow I would bet tomorrow I will have lost weight as well.

Saturday Susan and I went for a ride up corner canyon. It was very windy. I have never thought of the wind much when I ride a mtn bike but I did on Saturday. It was blowing hard in our face most of the ride. Corner Canyon funnels the wind and you can really feel it. It was nice to get out anyway. My heart again hit 180 so I have adjusted my max heart rate up to 185.

261 Erich's new ride

Check out Erich's new sled. It is fairly wild looking. That seat post is plenty long. The bike was a great deal. I picked it up at the end of last year when Cannondale was blowing them out. I knew he would need a new bike and they were shaving 35% off the price. I had to pick it up. Now that it has been set up for him we will start riding on the weekends. Boo will have lacrosse for about another month so he will be a bit out of race shape but should be able to ride back into an acceptable level of fitness. Plus the lacrosse should be good cross training.

My weight loss is slowing. I have been a bit disappointed with the scale lately. I had been losing about a pound a day and now it is down to half a pound. Today I actually gained a pound. I have been very good about the prescribed diet. I have not cheated at all so I am not sure why things have slowed down. 5 lbs in a week is not bad I just had been expecting more. Today, for example, I have had 8 oz of chicken a cup of grilled onions and 2 oranges. This is just not much food and I would think more weight would have come off. I have not been riding as much as I should. Maybe I will do 30 min per day on the trainer on days where I cannot get outside. If something does not change I will not make my goal of 245 by the end of this 40 day period.

264 Tough Weekend.

Saturday I worked on my basement for most of the day. I finished the landing and probably 50 sq feet of the big room. Lots of cutting. When I had had enough of that I took Erich over to the bike shop and Ryan spent some time fitting him to his new Scalpel. The thing looks weird. Any bike he rides looks weird. The seat post is through the roof and then it has a riser neck as well. His torso is just too short to fit very well. His torso would fit a medium and his legs would best fit on an XL. Anyhow he is now set. Once Lacrosse is over he will start riding more often. Saturday night we went over to the in laws. It was Susan's dad's 75th birthday. We had a big meal of Steak and potato's. I had half a steak which was probably 2 to 3 times as bigger than what I should eat. I did my best not to go over board. No cake or ice cream.

Sunday I had to go to work for a few hours to get caught up. Then I treated myself to some more tile. I laid another 50 sq feet in the big room and called it. Erich and I went and rode Corner canyon that afternoon. I figured since Erich had not been on a bike since September he would have no cycling fitness. I was wrong. He tells me he never used his granny gear and felt really good. I have no idea because I never saw him again after the start of BST going north. I rode BST up to Corner Canyon road and then the top of Ghost falls and rode back down CC and up to the equestrian center where I ran into the Hypio's. They were out doing a road ride. Erich went over Corner Canyon to Clark's and then turned back and went down Ghost Falls. He said it was muddy and technical. I expected him to be covered in mud. He was a bit muddy but not too bad. I guess he had to walk through a few patches of snow.

I am going to have to rethink my maximum heart rate. I hit 184 going up corner canyon. I though my max was around 178. In the past 3 years I have never hit 180 and in the past two weeks I have been over 180 a couple of times. Weird. Lose weight and your heart beats faster? I guess so. That or my Garmin is not reading things right.

The dog in the above picture is my old field trial dog Splash. She is 12. I have a shoe box full of ribbons that she won. Definitely the best dog I have ever owned. The painted toe nails are my Daughters idea of a good jab at me. Painted toe nails on a hunting dog. Just not right. I think Splash is humiliated.

This made me laugh today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ9TTCTyid4