Get To It

Nope,I haven't forgotten about this blog. I have just done very little in the way of consuming and burning calories over the last month or so. Well, thats not entirely true really, I've been doing plenty of consuming holiday calories.

I have just two weeks until the Tour de Felasco and when I signed up for it back in October I planned on doing the metric century option. Last year I got a late start and didn't make the cutoff time so I could only do the fifty miler. I'll just have to see if my legs are going to cooperate since I have barely even ridden 62.5 miles in the entire month of December.

So I wonder, are two weeks worth of doing intervals on the trainer going to be enough to whip me back into good enough shape for a day in the woods on my bike? Without feeling completely wiped out afterwards?

We shall see.

Early Morning Ride

I was going crazy yesterday because two days into my four day weekend and I still hadn't been able to get out for a ride. I could see today was going to be more of the same so I needed to get out and back home early.

So by 5:20am I was loading my gear into the truck, it amazes me sometimes how long it takes to prepare to just go for a mtb ride. It would be great if I could just head out and pedal, but I just don't think it's possible. You have to prepare a drink for your camel back, depending how long your ride is going to be you have to prepare some food. In cooler weather you have to put more thought and time into clothing. Then there's the bike, at a minimum you've got to check air pressures and get it in or on your car, which may require some disassembly, and then reassembly at the trail. Then, finally, there's the drive to the trail, at least thirty minutes in my case...ugh...I could just ride the road bike I suppose...nah, it's still dark out and I guess I'm just not really into sharing the road with cars in the dark. At least not out on a two lane country road. So I headed for San Felasco and by 6:15am I was riding.

It was still dark so I did a few laps around Progress Park and warmed up a little before heading for the woods. As soon as I could see a little blue in the sky I was headed down the singletrack, of course it was still plenty dark under the cover of the forest.

Just as the sun was coming up and I could see a clearing in the trees ahead there stood a large cat. It caught me off guard and my first thought was what's someones cat doing way out here, then I was struck by it's size, probably close to knee high on me. When I noticed the short tail I knew what I was looking at. Certainly no house cat, it was a fairly large bobcat, a rare sight indeed, for me anyway! I am used to mainly seeing deer, armadillos, the occasional wild hog, and an abundance of kamikaze squirrels that are always trying to psych me out by running under my wheels!

Holiday Calories

Why is it when I let my training relax a little I tend to increase my calorie intake? Or maybe it's the quality of the calories that I let slip, or sometimes worse, both.

I don't really understand the logic. Maybe I just don't want to sabotage the time that I spend training with poor eating habits. But when I'm not training I eat whatever I want.

Now that the holiday season is here, and there will be plenty of tasty calories to be consumed, I suppose that I should step up the quality of my training. You know, to offset the calories that I plan on eating, or at least help me feel less guilty about them.

Didn't Put It Off

  Well I didn't get out for a run when planned, and before I knew it, it was dark out and getting late. But I didn't put it off. It would have been so easy, but instead I headed out and went for a run....a short one, but a run nonetheless. And I feel great about it!

Slacktober

I haven't done much riding (read: no riding), or any other activities for that matter, in the last two weeks and I feel like such a slacker because of it. Don't get me wrong, I've got a whole list of things that I could blame it on.

Like it's soccer season for my son and he has a lot of games and a busy practice schedule.
Or it's been crazy at work the last few weeks and after standing on my feet for 9 or 10 hours going out for a ride or a run hasn't sounded as inviting as sitting on the couch at home.
Or that pain that I get every couple of months that starts as a sore neck then travels into my arms, back, and chest. I was told that it is probably a bulging disc in my neck, and it seems that it touches a nerve that kicks off this pain that reminds me of a bad toothache in my whole upper body. No amount of massaging, laying still, or moving around seems to help much. So going for a ride may not be much worse than just sitting on the couch.

I'm sure that I could come up with more if I tried but the fact is that if I really wanted to I would have found a way.
Got on the scale yesterday and guess what?
Motivation is back. Situps and pushups earlier and now I must go for a run.

Signed, King Slacker

Conquistador

Just a photo of one of my favorite local trails.

Week One

  Well at the end of week one I'm down to 201.4 from 205.5, not to bad considering the only change that I've made so far is ramping up the exercise a little. I managed to get my hands on some great tasting BBQ ribs and beans a couple of times last week, so yeah, thats what I'll use as my excuse for not changing my diet just yet. I know that some changes are in store though if I plan on bettering that number this week however.

  As far as exercise goes, well I've made a few changes there. I tried to do something every day, and I've gone outside of my comfort zone, things that I otherwise wouldn't do. In fact I may avoid these exercises all together. My comfort zone is pretty much just cycling. I'll usually ride on the indoor trainer (so I can be home with my family) at least twice a week, and I'll get out for a ride maybe 1-2 (sometimes 3) times with at least one of those being a good hard ride. This week I have also been doing some core strengthening workouts, you may have heard of these, push ups and sit ups. I don't really enjoy doing them, and I have always avoided them, so I thought that would be a good thing to work on. Running is something else that I seem to always avoid so this week I went out running twice, and along with running I thought it might be good to run stadiums since we have a great football stadium here in Gainesville. Who new that those would be so hard! My legs have been pretty sore from that for several days now but I won't give up on them, in fact I think I kind of like them!

Stadiums

   I tried something new after work yesterday; instead of going for a bike ride I headed over to Florida Field and ran stadiums. If you’ve never done that before you may think that it’s no big deal, but it is. It is very hard! We were running up the section in the upper right area of this picture from the field level all the way to the top. I believe I counted 147 steps up. I went up and back down four times (that’s 588 steps by the way) and my legs were like rubber afterwards. I’m told that if I keep doing it I’ll be doing it 40 times by winter…..we’ll see.

Rain Day

 I skipped my usual mountain bike ride this morning due to our bipolar weather here in Florida today. Even though it's beautiful outside now, this morning it was not. It was pouring rain and according to the weather map it didn't appear to be going away anytime soon. Now I'm not entirely against riding in the rain, I just have a hard time starting a ride in the rain. So instead of going out in the mud I stayed in and worked out on this, which happens to be where my road bike seems to stay parked most of the time lately.

Time to Obsess

  Four short years ago I was in pretty bad shape, funny thing is I don't think that I even realized it. I was always exhausted, my body always ached even though other than standing the entire day, my job wasn't any more physical than my current job. In fact I rarely had a day where I felt good. I was working a lot of hours in a job that seemed to keep me in a constant state of stress. I was eating drive-thru crap everyday, sometimes mutiple times a day, and always the largest size available. Usally with an extra cheese burger or burrito from the value menu. It's only another 99 cents so why not?

  Who knows how heavy I actually got. I just know that one day I got on the scale and it said 250lbs. I couldn't believe it.  Something had to be done. I dusted off my old mountain bike and started riding some after work, my wife got me a gym membership and I somehow came up with the time to use it, nearly every day of the week. She also set me up with a nutrition expert to teach me about the food that I was eating. I had a meeting with this expert once a week to talk about what I had been eating and what type of exercises I had been doing. Oh yeah....and to weigh in on the dreaded scale. And I think it was because of these weekly meetings that I became almost obsessed with the food I was taking in and the amount of calories I was burning. It was amazing how much better I was feeling once I started to get back into shape. Not just physically, but mentally as well. I don't remember how long it took exactly, somewhere around six months, but I got rid of 58lbs. of extra mass that I was carrying around on my feet everyday. And I gained quite a bit of muscle while I was at it.

 192lbs. was my weight and I was able to keep it between that and 195 pretty much for 3 years. This year however seems to be slipping away from me though. I remember telling myself that I would never let myself get back over 200, and I've been there for at least the last 6 months. At one point recently I saw 212 come up on the scale. Must be time to obsess again.