Neither Rain, Nor Sleet, Nor Snow....Wait, This Is Spring Break?

Just a few days ago I was in the sunny warm embrace of a San Diego springtime. I mentioned to Nate that if we had more time I'd be hitting a local bike shop, renting a bike, and getting out along the 101 beachfront for a ride. Oh how the times have changed.

Today I decided to work off some of the In-N-Out flab I picked up on the aforementioned road trip, and set out for a 20 mile boogie to the Bankers Cup coffee shop in St. Paul. I spent part of the morning waiting for the kids to call from the border to let us know they'd made it safely back to American soil, and once they did, I figured I could get away from the phone long enough to squeeze in some exercise. Question was, would the weather hold up long enough for me to do so?

If you've been following the local forecast, we've had wild weather. Everything from sun breaks to rain, sleet, hail and snow. The sun was peeking through as I geared up, but I saw the clouds off in the distance, and hoped they wouldn't move in on me. And even if they did, I rode 70 miles in the rain last summer....right? I could handle a few in the rain if the good Lord decided to send some on down. And send some down, he did.

For about half the ride -- probably 10 miles in the middle portion -- it rained. And it hailed. And doggonnit, I think it was snowing too. It was colder than last years Livestrong in the rain, and the hail/sleet on the face didn't feel too great, but after those 10 miles or so, it cleared back up and I rode the last 5 miles into St. Paul on sunny, but wet pavement.



The Fam drove out and met me at the Bankers Cup. It's a quaint little espresso shop built in an old bank building.

There's a great fireplace (which I wish would have been fired up) and the coffee is from our own little Governor's Cup here in Salem. I got out there shortly after one, the family rolled in close to 1:30, and the shop closed at 2, so we had to grab a quick drink and go.

I changed into the dry street clothes they brought, tossed the Torreli in the back of the Blue Dream, and hitched a ride back on four wheels. We also hit the local feed store where they sell Ass Kickin' products, Cattlepults, and every kind of feed and fertilizer imagineable.

Although it was turned off, they also had a serious 50" flat panel hanging above the rustic wooden door....nice!

And so ends the crazy Spring Break week of 2008. The kids will be home tomorrow night and everyone is looking forward to having their children back in their homes. Looking forward to some sunny days ahead for better riding than rain, hail and snow!

Hasta!

PS - Keijiro - you would have hated it....even colder and wetter than last year! That Bay Area ride is sounding better by the minute!

Road Trip

Let me just say that after 1500 miles of a 2100 mile, 42 hour round trip drive. After enough Rockstars and Starbucks canned Double Shots to own stock in both companies, and after a 5 pm dinner stop at In-N-Out in San Diego already....a group of fellas from Oregon with an all night drive ahead of them should probably *not* take this on at 1 am.

But, it *was* the last In-N-Out that was going to be open before we left California. Who knew there was such a thing as 'Animal Style' burgers there?

Hasta.

Saturday Ride In Between The Rain

When the rain comes, they run and hide their heads....

Or, the wait for a cloud break, throw on the gear and hit the road.

After a week off of riding, I was anxious to get back on the bike. With still very little free time, and coming off the flu/cold combo, it's been tough to get out and ride this week, but Saturday provided a quick opportunity.

The previous week was beautiful and I was able to do my 30 Mile Waconda loop. This week I started hitting rain at the 10 mile mark, and since I'm still hacking pretty good, at least a little each day, I turned and just made a 20 mile loop for the day. Every mile on the bike, outside of the garage, is a good one.

As you may have noticed, I replaced last years Livestrong ad with a mileage counter for the year...my goal is to ride 2000 miles this year on my bike. I'm at 82 for the year. To hit 2000, I need to average about 45 miles a week, or at least 15 miles each time I ride, and do that 3 times a week. With the slow start to the season I'm off pace by about 450 miles, so I've got some making up to do. Thank goodness we just Sprung Forward with Daylight Savings Time -- hopefully I can take advantage of the longer day soon!

Another goal I'm contemplating is doing this years Monster Cookie Ride, which leaves Salem, heads north for 31 miles, then turns back around for a 62 mile metric century. The ride is a relatively flat ride, with only some rolling hills along the way. I have also heard many a comment about the cookies along the ride, specifically the macaroons, which I'm sure I'd be tempted to try. Of course, as a chubby guy who took up riding to lose weight, riding my bike and eating cookies isn't really the plan of the ages to accomplish that goal. Hopefully I would burn more calories for the day than I would consume in cookies!

I'm also still wondering about Cycle Oregon, but just not sure I can take the time for the whole week, and/or creatively take the whole family out with. If I come up with good solutions for either, I may be in!

Hasta!

Day 369: One Year Later

Well, it's actually been more than a year, but figured I should commemorate the day somehow and dust this old blog off for a bit. So lets chat, over a hot cup of coffee from the Fogon, shall we?

On February 3 of 007, I set out to lose some weight. I won't bore you with all details in this post...you can go back through history and see the hows, whys, and whats that inspired me to get going. I blame it all on that Lifehacker, Kyle Pott. But I digress....I was pushing 260, and really wanted to get out of the whole Mexi-Claus look I had going on. I set many goals along the way, but really wanted to lose 50 lbs, and 124 days later, I did just that.

Now a year later, I'm happy to say that I've kept it off...well, mostly. Life got pretty crazy, busy, ugly, and stressful around September and pretty much stayed that way until just about now. Things are finally starting to feel like they may be getting back to normal. And I'm ready to get back into the swing of things and start making the next push.

I say I've mostly kept it off because I've fluctuated around that 50 lb mark off and on. Gaining back as much as 8 lbs, and losing as much as 3 more lbs for a total of 53 at my very best mark. Today I'm a good 5-6 lbs off of my mark, but still holding on to a 42-43 lb loss, which is the best I've ever done. I'm happy for that, but am feeling like I'm right at the Crossroads -- I'll either put back on my glutton hat, and get all jolly and fat again, or I'll get back to exercising, drinking water, and paying closer attention to the calories. I'm probably mostly writing this post for my own accountability in choosing the latter.

That's it. I'd have loved to have said I hit 70 or 100 lbs by now, but life happened. I'm trying to mix it all up now and see if I can't get stuff done and still lose weight. I think the next 50 lbs will be harder by far. :)

Hasta.

Day 295: Didn't Happen

Update: 50 lb Goal Reached Day 124. Current weight - 208.6 lbs - 8.6 lbs to under 200 goal.

No pictures. No real time to post, but for those who are interested. Didn't happen. Same weight as two weeks ago. Too much going on. No real time to workout as much as I'd like. Not even a ton of motivation to post on a regular basis. Hopefully like gets back to normal before long.

Happy Day After Thanksgiving.

Day 279: New Goal - Under 200 By Thanksgiving

Update: 50 lb Goal Reached Day 124. Current weight - 208.6 lbs - 8.6 lbs to under 200 goal.

No, I'm not on a blogging strike with the rest of the writing world. Life has just been crazy.

I'm on a new mission. Good news - I've continued to maintain the 50 lbs I've lost for over 150 days. Bad news - I haven't been working very hard at getting down any further, and I still have some work to do, so I'm setting a new goal. By Thanksgiving this year, I want to get that scale to show me a number under 200. So basically, I've got two weeks to lose 8+ lbs.

I realize this is an ambitious goal. In the past 4 months I haven't been able to do it...I'm not sure what makes me think I can do it in the next two weeks, but if you don't have a goal, you won't hit it. I actually think I have the tools to be able to do this, and here's are a few reasons why I believe I just might be able to pull it off.

#1 - I haven't been drinking water like I should.
I kind of knew this might happen - as the fall comes around, and colder days arrive, I tend to gravitate towards coffee more and more, and leave the water behind. Heck, it's possible, I've got a few pounds of pure water weight alone to get rid of, so I'm gonna try to hit the water again.

#2 - I'm not counting calories as strictly as I was before
One of the benefits of going through the process that I did with tracking every single calorie until I hit my goal is that I have a pretty good grasp of how many calories are in most things I'm eating. One of the downfalls though is that it's too easy to generalize, and give myself a little wiggle room. While I haven't had a hard time wiggling into my clothes or anything, I know that part of the reason I'm just maintaining and not losing, is that I'm taking in more calories than I was during my poundage dropping days. Getting back to cutting those down again will help.

#3 - I'm getting out on the bike a decent amount
After an initial scary experience on the rollers (see previous post) where I rode for 5 minutes without letting go of the wall next to me, I've actually made decent use of the rollers for exercise. Although it's still pretty tricky to even find 45 minutes to get out and ride, last week I was able to find 4 of 7 days where I could get out and ride in the garage, and on Saturday I even took advantage of the weather and got a 15 mile *real* ride in.

The rollers aren't exactly like real riding - no wind in the hair, no change of scenery, not the same kind of road friction - but they've been a decent way to get the heartbeat up, and do it on the bike I'm used to riding. It's definitely as close to real riding as I'm gonna get until we get back to the biking season again. Instead of the great outdoors, I'm now watching all kinds of streaming online tv episodes on an old laptop, and still getting used to being strapped on to a bike on 3 little spinning wheels. Two times now, I've just about gone down - not while riding, but when I forget to reach out for the chair to my left when stopping, and then have to desperately find the fridge behind me on the other side in time to stop from hitting the floor. I'm still an idiot on them.

Anyway, I think if I start putting down the water again, and watch the calories, along side of keeping up the exercise, I just might be able to get to under 200 lbs by Thanksgiving this year.

So once again, let the battle cry sound.....Release the Pounds!

Day 257: Rain and Rollers

Update: 50 lb Goal Reached Day 124. Current weight - 206.6 lbs - 8.6 lbs to 60 lb goal.

"When the rain comes...they run and hide their heads...." Anyone?

Well, the forecast for the next week or longer is rain. Big surprise, it's October in Oregon...what else should I expect? And even though I have some great experience cranking out the miles in the rain, I'm going to limit the amount of time I allow crazy weather drivers to target me out on the open roads.

In addition to the weather, I'm finding that with school in session, business and church commitments, and the family schedule, that the only shot I have at riding these days is Saturday mornings, and frankly, that's not gonna keep the poundage off this fall. I need to be doing more. I've considered the whole Club option, but frankly, I've never liked that place, I'm not really a Club kind of guy...there's no real draw for me, and again, it's more an issue of time than weather, so finding time to pack up my gear and head to the club is going to be as tough as finding time to get geared up and go riding. What I really need to is be able to ride, indoors, after hours somewhere, on my bike, but such a place doesns't exist.

For folks that want to ride indoors, at home, during the off season or after hours, there are a few options, which I'll go through here today.

Stationary Bike
Yeah, I could go old school like this and pick up a $15 stationary bike, but frankly....ugh.


Bike Trainer
Another option is to buy a trainer, a device that basically you either hook your rear wheel to, or use as a friction device against your rear tire, and ride in place. Check out how much fun this looks like:


Rollers
So, the next option is to get rollers. Basically, these are treadmills for bikes, and just like treadmills, have the same type of pitfalls. It takes some serious effort to get up on them, and stay on them. If you 'youtube' bike rollers, you'll see all kinds of people who are videoing themselves trying to get up on rollers...and many times not succeeding.(Like the dude below) When people do get up on them, they really can't stand up on the bike, or do any real kind of riding...just to dangerous...and consequently...boring. Most people have a love/hate relationship with rollers...more on the hate side.


Fluid Motion Rollers
So this company called InsideRide took the rollers another step further and put them inside a floating cage, with rollers up on the side as well. Because of the added movement of the entire machine, and the added protection of the rollers on the side, you can actually stand up and step it up a bit on the bike. Still gonna be boring as all get-out compared to actually riding on the roads, BUT I can get out for an hour after dark without risking my life against trucks and cars that may not see me.


Every review I've read about them has given them 5 stars, and they seem to be the best indoor option for keeping the wheels rollin'. Another cool bonus is that they are made in Oregon, right over in North Plains....not too far from Maggie's Buns. Now I'll just need to pick up some copies of shows I've never watched, like The Office or 30 Rock, to fill my time while I'm rollin' away!

Hasta!