Goodbye, old friend

This week marks me saying goodbye to the 250's. I broke into the 240's and I will never go back. I have gotten Ryan onto the trail and he handed my ass to me on his third ever trail ride. This proves two things....I am super slow....and I need to lose weight. Fixing one of these problems will in turn fix the other. It was disheartening to watch him go flying away while I just watched in horror. His average speed was close to what my race pace usually is. If I can get my weight down while still pushing the pedals I will without a doubt be faster. Saying goodbye to the 250's is a step in the right direction. I am a loser. I will need to continue to be a loser until I can be a winner. Not that kind of loser....but surely that kind of winner. I have to lose before I can win. This goes both ways. I have lost. I have lost bad. I was drilled by some 9 year old kid at Fort Custer. Got smoked by a 17 year old kid at Yankee. Took last in both races. These riders walked up to me after the races and said "here....this belongs to you". Yup...my ass. Ryan handed it to me a few weeks ago at Fort Custer. Stating that he had time to make lunch and take a nap before I got there. I told you before I have about 50 excuses that can cover every aspect of why I am fat. I will not give them to you here. I will sit on my bike and pedal my ass off. Every pedal stroke will get me closer to my goal. It is coming. In 9 months I will step up to the start line of the Yankee Springs Time Trial a Beginner racer. The Clydesdale will be gone. I will send the horse to the glue factory. For those that don't know what a Clydesdale is.....it is a racer over 200 pounds. Yes...I will be under 200....and I will have a basket of ass on my bike....and I will be handing it out to everyone I can.

endeavors

This last week was terrible for riding. I rode on Sunday and Monday then managed to take the rest of the week off. I have lots of excuses but they just translate into my being lazy. I was good and rested for Fort Custer on this past Sunday though. Ryan, Chris H., Jody, Tom and I went down for a Red/Green combo. The weather was perfect. It was high 70's and windy. We all rode together until CPR on the red. Tom and I broke off and went down into Granny's Garden while everyone else kept going. I wanted to try and catch them after GG so I put some pressure on Tom to keep up with me. We were flying thru the Freeway. It felt good to just hammer and pressure someone that I know is usually faster than me. He kept up....but still....I was trying my best to break him. When we got to the table top Chris was there. We rode the rest of the red and met up with Ryan and Jody at the trailhead. They decided to ride fast and leave us behind...but that is fine....we were having a blast! After a break we headed down the Green. Jody was getting water and something to eat when we were taking off. She said "I will catch you guys". I bet her I would beat her to the singletrack....which was almost a mistake. We were about 100 yards from where the singletrack starts when I heard Tom say "here she comes" and I just hammered it to the top of the switchback. As she went smoking past me at the top she said "I almost had you" and then proceeded to leave me behind again. LOL.

Anyway....we rode the green and when we got to the step-up towards the end I hammered it home again. This time I managed to leave Tom on flat....not by much...but I was pushing as hard as I could and I can be fast....well.....sorta fast....hehe. Overall just a good day at the fort!

Today I hit the hill ride. I did turn off to avoid the monster hill that almost killed me last time and I think I actually ended up climbing more, but I feel pretty good. Tomorrow will be a rest day pulling the girls and taking the big kids for a ride....at a nice easy pace.

I apologize...

I apologize in advance for putting ads on my blog. I figured it would be a way to get a little extra money....but for the few that actually read it.......do what you must.....if you find it extremely bothersome....let me know and I will crush it.

Thanks....happy reading.

Father's Day

That was a busy couple of days. Saturday I did some stuff around the house and then went to Jessica's Graduation party. We didn't get home until 9:00....then we went to see "The Hangover" which I highly recommend for its comedy factor. He got home and in bed around midnight. I knew the alarm was going to be going off at 5:30 so I tried to go right to sleep. Unfortunately I was too stoked to be riding at Fort Custer in the morning.

As you can imagine I was ready to ride some trails after 80 road miles. Ryan decided that he wanted to try his hand at the dirt and we headed out. We rode the Red loop first. Good. We rode the Green loop.........good......well......yeah we will go with good. Ryan did an awesome job. He rode the first 16 miles with no problems. We would stop for a second at the tops of the longer climbs, but other than that he did good. Jody was with us too and she suggested riding the race course so we could go thru the river. I say river because it was DEEP. The cold water felt really good but the wet socks....not so much. Anyway.....we got a few miles in and Ryan stopped.....got off his bike and said "that is gonna cramp"...which it nearly did. I knew we still had about 5 miles left of the ride so he turned off and headed back to the trailhead by road. Jody and I continued to the Red and finished a short time after. Well...I say short time...Jody was done before I was...she is really fast......and on a single speed.

Overall it was an awesome day on the trail....just under 28 miles of fast fun singletrack. After riding we headed home and to a Father's day party at my in-laws'. Ate my weight in macaroni and taco salad...then came home to relax. Just a good day with good friends and family!

RE-BOOT

For anyone that knows me or has read this blog in the last year, you know that I am overweight. Where I would like to be 185 I am sitting consistently at 250. This is good and bad. Bad because that means I still have 65 pounds to lose. Good because since I have not been working for the last 5 weeks I have not gained anything! YES. VICTORY.....or something. Another good thing is that I can start over.....again. There are 28 weeks left in 2009. At an average of 2 pounds a week I can be at 194 by Christmas. Realistically speaking this will not happen. However, if you look at the date of my first race for 2010 it adds another 16 weeks for a total of 44 weeks. Now....two pounds a week is more like 88 pounds. As you know it gets harder to lose the weight when you don't have it to lose. I can lose like crazy in the beginning and then slow way down. I will be posting weekly totals to show my progress. I am going to DO this time....there will be no trying about it. Wish me luck.

Serious callous work

I put some serious work in on my butt callous today. I wanted to do a long ride....and it ended up being a few miles more than I planned...but it was good. I left the house at 7:15 and headed out to do what I thought was a 33 mile loop. I was feeling pretty good. There are some hills in the beginning and then it flattens out for about 8 miles. After that it seems like its uphill forever. The road turned East towards home and I figured I had about 13 miles to go. I knew this 13 miles was going to be hard because there are no downhills and lots of long climbs. Not steep by any means....just long. One of them is about a mile. Anyway....to assist in the climbing on this route was a decent headwind. It turned out to be about a 10 mile headwind. I was able to keep my cadence high and keep pushing...but I was getting a little tender (if you follow). My legs felt great but the seat was ever becoming more uncomfortable. I pulled into my house at 37.01 miles with an average speed of 16.47. Two things...one....fastest avg I have ever had on that bike...two....longest I have ridden this year. When I got home Megan and the girls wanted to go so we loaded the little ones into the trailer and Megan grabbed Chelle's bike...and off we went....AGAIN. Thankfully Megan only wanted to go 8 miles....so I am still alive...with a total of 45 miles in one day. I almost rode as much today as I did all of last month...only 5 miles difference. I am feeling pretty good though...and I am surely taking a rest day tomorrow on my birthday!

WTF???

I just realized that I rode more last week than I did for the entire month of May. Dang. See my stats to the left........thats just sad.