And . . . here's the rain

The rain finally came, but fortunately not until this evening.  So, I managed to get in another lunchtime ride, and a 5k run this evening.  The ride was great, but I got a little wet during my run.

Food:

• Breakfast: Fruit / protein smoothie
• Lunch:  Protein bar after my ride
• Dinner:  Mini paleo pizzas, again.  Really tasty.

Exercise:

• 17 mile bike ride at lunch
• 3.25 mile run after dinner

Today's weigh-in:  179.8.  Sweet!

Hey, it didn't rain!

So, it was supposed to start out nice today, and then rain all afternoon. Fortunately, the rain never came, and I was able to get in a lunchtime bike ride again. Not much else to talk about today. I think the rain is now supposed to start overnight, so we'll see if I can get in a ride tomorrow.

Oh, and get this....  So, I'm riding my bike at lunch, along the Platte River.  First, I'm riding along and a bird flies out of the grass, and right into my front wheel.  He definitely got hurt, but managed to take off into the trees, and I lost him.  Then, minutes later, I looked off to my right, on the other side of the river, and there's a bunch o' turkeys!  Just walkin' around!  Weird.

What the heck?  It's a turkey!

Food:

• Breakfast: Fruit / protein smoothie
• Lunch: Protein bar after my bike ride
• Dinner: Crazy night tonight, and no time for normal dinner. On the way back from my daughter's gymnastics, the kids and I stopped at Wendy's. Although a burger would have been delicious, I opted for the new bbq ranch chicken salad instead. It was ok, but nothing spectacular.

Exercise:

• 16 mile ride at lunch. Got started a few minutes late, so I had to cut my usual ride a little short.

Today's weigh-in: 181.8

Nice ride today

Managed to get in a nice ride today.  It was pretty chilly, but the ride was good.  It was close to 50 miles, and I got in a couple good climbs.  I rode with my friend Dale, and we tackled The Wall from the classic Morgul Bismark route, and then headed over to the climb up to the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).  In between, we ran into a bike race and had to take a detour from our planned route.  The race was called The Koppenberg, and includes a couple miles of dirt road, and a pretty serious climb, especially for a road bike.  Here is a video of this section from back in 2010.  Dale and I ended up having to climb this today, which was definitely not expected.

NCAR.  A nice climb up from Boulder, and just a really cool place.

I really crushed the climb up The Wall today.  A couple weeks ago, I rode it in 7:16.  Today was 5:43.  Awesome.  On Strava, this puts me into 228th place out of 1,199 riders.  Hopefully I can improve that a little bit this season, once I get a little stronger, and especially when I'm dressed for warmer weather.

After the ride today, we had to get read for the Lions Club Relays.  This is a local elementary school event, with all the elementary schools in the district competing against each other.  My daughter raced for the 3rd grade girls.  She did awesome.

Awesome.

Got some rain in the forecast this week.  That's going to screw up my lunchtime rides . . . again.  Kind of annoying.

Food:

• Breakfast:  Fruit / protein smoothie
• Lunch:  Grabbed one of those new flatbread sandwiches from Wendy's on my way home from my bike ride.
• Dinner:  Pork chops and broccoli
• Dessert:  We went out to Yogurt Yum! to celebrate my daughter's performance in the relay.

Exercise:

• 46 mile ride, 2,500' of elevation gain.  Felt great.

Today's weigh-in:  183.2

Milestones

So, last night I weighed in at 181.2 lbs.  It occurred to me as I was slowly waking up this morning that there are a number of weight milestones coming up, which is kind of fun.

• 180 lbs - not really a milestone, but it a nice even number, so that's cool.
• 178 lbs - This was the weight I hit a little over a year ago, the last time I went on a weight-loss kick.  At the time, it was my lowest weight in years.  So it will be nice to match that again.
• 176 lbs - This will mark a big 10-lb milestone for me during this effort.  176 lbs will mark a 50 lb loss since I started back on January 1.  50 lb is such a nice big number to talk about, so I am looking forward to that
• 170 lbs - Another nice even number
• 166 lbs - This will mark 60 lbs of weight loss this year
• 165 lbs - This number is my goal for this year, and the number that I wanted to be at for riding the Triple Bypass on July 13.   Right now, it still seems reasonable, but I would love to get even lower if I could.

I was looking online at some "ideal weight calculators" and the numbers are all over the board.  No one can seem to agree on how to determine this, and various calculations have been used over the years.  Based on what I saw, I would say my "ideal weight" is probably somewhere in between 155 and 165 lbs, so I think my goal is reasonable, and if I can beat it a little bit, even better.

In terms of cycling, weight becomes a little more interesting.  Cycling power is often measured in a power-to-weight ratio.  You take your measured power (with a power meter) or calculated power (based on a calculation of personal weight, bike weight, speed and elevation gain on a bike ride) and divide it by your weight in kilograms.  This gives you your power-to-weight ratio, a number that you can use to gauge your performance, and a good number to watch and improve over time.

Currently, I am fat.  No getting around that.  But I've lost over 40 lbs, and am getting closer to where I want to be.  Ever pound of fat that I lose makes me healthier, and improves my power-to-weight ratio.  And with all the training I did over the winter, and the outdoors riding I am doing now, I am improving my power numbers as well, thus further improving power-to-weight.  Pretty soon, I hope to be at my goal weight, where losing weight stops being a goal, and increasing power becomes more important.  I will need to start adding more power-based training to my routine, improving leg strength and building lean muscle mass while maintaining that ideal weight.  This will mean more climbing, and probably some weight training.  I found a good explanation of power-to-weight for cyclists HERE.

In terms of today, I wasn't able to get in a good ride.  The kids had swim lessons, so I headed to Lifetime and swam laps during their lessons.  After lessons and lunch, I spent most of the afternoon fixing up the family's bikes.  Cleaning and adjusting, getting rid of the weird little noises, truing the wheels a bit.  Then, we headed to the middle school track for some practice for my daughter's relay race tomorrow.  We were using a paper-towel holder as a practice baton.  Looking forward to the relay tomorrow.  Should be fun.

Food:

• Breakfast:  Ran out of avocado, so we didn't do a smoothie today.  Had a bowl of Special K instead.
• Lunch:  Steak fajita burrito from Chipotle
• Dinner:  The kids went to Parents Night Out at Lifetime, while my wife and I headed out to the movies and dinner.  "Oblivion" was the only movie that worked into the schedule.  It was ok, but nothing spectacular.  And then we stopped at Marco's pizza.  That's all we had time for before we had to go pick the kids back up.

Exercise:

• 650 meters in the lap pool at Lifetime.

Today's weigh-in: 184.8

Ready for the weekend

Quick post today.  It's late, and I'm ready for bed.

First, I'll point out that I just updated yesterday's post with a couple pictures I grabbed off the internet showing the two new products I bought, the top-tube bag and the sun sleeves.

I had a good day today.  Got in a 20-mile ride at lunch, a quick run after work, and some swimming this evening at Lifetime.

Food:

• Breakfast:  Fruit / protein smoothie
• Lunch:  Protein bar after my ride
• Dinner:  Chipotle chicken quesadilla at the LifeCafe at Lifetime Fitness.

Exercise:

• 20 mile ride during lunch
• A little under 2 mile run after work.  I was planning on running a 5k practice with my daughter, but she wanted to ride her scooter instead.  And after one lap of the school, she wanted to play on the playground, so I just ran one more lap while she and my son played for a bit.
• During my wife's class at Lifetime tonight, I managed to get in 500 meters of swimming.  I swam with the kids for about 45-50 minutes, and practiced some snorkeling with them, which was fun.  Then we needed to stop so I could get in some laps.

Today's weigh-in:  181.2

Nicer weather on the way

Lots of snow yesterday, but sunny and warmer today. Unfortunately, that meant that the trails were going to be covered with melting snow, which doesn't make for a great lunchtime bike ride. So, instead of riding today, I used my lunch break to make a quick run to Performance Bike and pick up a couple things.

After my ride last weekend, I got some good ideas from the other riders. First was a top - tube storage bag. This is a little pouch that lives on the top tube right behind the handlebars, giving me quick access to my food, rather than trying to grab stuff from a back jersey pocket. I am hoping this will encourage me to eat more while I'm riding.

This is the top-tube bag I bought.

I also picked up some sun sleeves. These are kind of like arm warmers that I wear in cold weather, but are white and a different material, helping to keep me cooler during long rides on hot, sunny days, without having to lather on the sunblock. I'm looking forward to trying both of these out, and seeing if they improve my overall comfort on long rides.

And here are the sun sleeves.  No, that's not me.  Just a random picture from the internet.

Since I didn't ride during lunch, I wanted to get in some kind of workout. So, after dinner I went out for a 3.2 mile run around the neighborhood. I was feeling pretty good. At the time I'm typing this, I haven't uploaded my run into the computer, so I am not sure how I did, but I felt like I was running faster than earlier runs.

The 10-day forecast looks pretty good, so I am looking forward to getting in a lot of riding and running over the next couple weeks.  Can't wait.

Food:

• Breakfast: Fruit / protein smoothie
• Lunch: Protein bar in the car on the way to the bike shop
• Dinner: Steak, broccoli and some watermelon. Yum.

Exercise:

• 3.2 mile run around the neighborhood.  Pretty happy.  Now that I've uploaded everything to the computer, I see that I managed to get my personal records for 1k, 5k, 1 mile and 2 miles.  My Garmin Connect report is below, but doesn't show that info.  Strava tracks my records, and you can find that HERE.

Today's weigh-in: 184.4

I can't believe it's snowing again

Not much to say today.  It's snowing.  Again.  This is ridiculous.  It put me in kind of a bad mood.  So, the snow was depressing, and I couldn't ride at lunch.  I walked out to go move my car before lunch (I was in a 2-hour parking spot), and the parking guy was giving me a ticket.  I tried to find another place to park, but I couldn't find a spot anywhere.  I found another spot a few blocks from my office.  Then, I went to grab lunch, and the cheesesteak place was packed.  And then, my phone crashed.  It told me my battery was dead, when it was basically fully charged moments earlier.  My food took forever, and by the time I got it, I had about 5 minutes to eat before running back to my office for a conference call.  And it just kept snowing.

Went to Lifetime tonight, but just belayed the kids on the rock wall.  No exercise for me.

Food:

• Breakfast:  Fruit / protein smoothie
• Lunch: cheesesteak and fries
• Dinner:  Caesar salad with chicken

Exercise:

• None

Today's weigh-in:  186.4