Training - A Cat 3 Diet

No, I don't mean "A Cat 3's diet" although I suppose that's what I'm referring to in the title because, you know, I'm a Cat 3 and I'm dieting.

Rather than literally I mean it in the sense that I'm talking about a simple, no frills diet. It's the same way people talk about "what's a good crit bike for a Cat 3?"

That question has all sorts of implications built right in.

First, the assumption is that the rider, a Cat 3, will be buying the bike. It'll probably be discounted, maybe as much as an employee discount, but the bottom line is that the rider is paying for the bike. No fancy bikes unless the rider can afford it.

Second, there's this thought that the rider will crash the bike. When you think of what a Cat 3 crit rider should ride versus, say, someone doing a Gran Fondo, you think of different things. The Cat 3 crit rider "needs" something bombproof and easy to maintain. The Gran Fondo rider might be using a more delicate tool, more precise, more refined, perhaps gaining a touch of fragility in the process. The Cat 3 bike needs to be replaceable.

Third, the bike will be used hard. It's not a sunny day bike, it's a tool that the rider uses to propel themselves forward on the road. There will be bumpy road crits, the rider will use the shoulder to move up in a race, and riding through manhole covers and sewer grates will be normal and expected. The Cat 3 bike needs to be durable.

 

Workingman's bike 

You know where I'm going with this.

Diets can be based on a lot of things. Cleansing, protein, whey, no carbs, Atkins, all sorts of anthropological models, yada yada yada. To me those are all a bit more fragile than I want. They require more thought, more energy, more dedication.

They're not for me.

I've been dieting for 81 days, according to MyFitnessPal. 81 days. I emphasize that because when I started I was thinking 30 days ("a month") might be my max, maybe 45 days ("a month and a half"), and definitely nothing over 60 days ("two months").

I'm currently 18.5 lbs lighter than I was when I started, 160.3 lbs this morning. I'd started 81 days ago thinking that losing 10 lbs would be a dream.

Yesterday I ate about 1434 calories of food and went to bed not hungry. The day before that I did a ride and realistically had a net caloric intake of about 800 calories.

If you told me I could do that on Day 2 of my current diet I'd have said you were crazy.

I've been thinking a bit about why the diet is working. If I can put some of those reasons down here then maybe it'll help you with your diet goals.

You know, because I want everyone to beat me when I race. Haha.

Okay, maybe not. So if you promise not to get too much better than me, or at least hide it discretely when you're accidentally riding me off your wheel ("I'm sorry, I was thinking about that clip you had where you bridged that gap and the music that you use in the clips got me all psyched up and I started pedaling too hard" would work), I'll share my thoughts with you.

Keys to a Successful Workingman's Diet.

("Workingman" referring to the nickname for Cat 3 racers, i.e. "The workingman's category". Substitute woman for women.)

First, you have to be fat.

I see guys talking about how they need to lose an extra 10 pounds or whatever and I look at them and think, well, maybe if they cut off their arm they could lose 10 more pounds.

Because they're already skinny.

I'm not talking ProTour diet tips. I don't have anything to offer the skinny people. I'm talking about us regular folk with rolls and stuff. Heck, even after losing 18 pounds I'm still fat - right now I'm realistically at 20% fat, minimum, more like 22% fat. When I started I was in the 28% range.

You with me there? Then keep reading.

In 2010 I was realistically 13-15% fat at my lowest and I was in the 155 lbs range, seeing 149 lbs after a longer ride. I stopped weighing myself once the season got under way because my weight seemed to be stable at 155-158, so I lack the numbers from later in the season, but I suspect I got lighter. However I steadily gained weight from September that year.

So for me the key is to be fat first because that's the only kind of start point I've had for a diet.

Second, don't spend a lot of time thinking about food.

Be aware of it, sure, but don't spend the whole day thinking about it. I don't go about my day thinking about this food or that food. Food is a functional fuel for me, not much more.

A Cat 3 bike isn't the kind of bike you think about. You get to the race, put the wheel or wheels on, check the tire pressure, and ride the thing. It's a rock solid bike that doesn't need babying. Do you care what bar is on there? What post? What chain? Not really. If it isn't broken then you don't need to fix it. Get fancy stuff here and there to reward yourself, like a set of cool wheels. Overall though your mental energy goes elsewhere, not the bike.

My diet approach reflects that. I don't think much about food. I'm aware of when I last ate only because it's easy to eat 3 hours after a meal without realizing it. Making it 4 or 5 reduces the number of meals by one and that makes a significant dent in the total caloric intake.

However I don't go around thinking of what I am not eating, that I can't eat, or particular foods for whatever reason. Even when feeding Junior I manage to separate what he's eating (he likes pizza, fruits, bread, cheese) and what I'm eating (not much pizza at all, not much cheese at all).

Third, don't make it hard on yourself

This is key. Don't make your diet hard on yourself. I remember a friend telling me that "Such and such is serious about racing this year. He's on a diet - this morning I saw him eat some toast with a slice of tomato on it."

Yeah, if I did that I'd be eating my second breakfast about 20 minutes later.

The other thing that wouldn't work for me is "Hey, this is how you make this great food! Just gather these 22 ingredients, combine this, mix that, pour here, and voila, 114 minutes later you're ready to eat! It's fantastic!"

Right.

I timed how long it took me to get breakfast ready this morning. Yes, timed.

I was up at 6:30 or so, maybe 7:00? I don't remember. I wasn't 100% awake so that was normal, but Junior was asleep so I had less distractions.

Luckily I used a timer of sorts to prepare my breakfast - a microwave. This was my breakfast prep:

1. Pour coffee out of the very nice carafe (basically a sealed and insulated carafe so the coffee doesn't taste acrid, and as a bonus there's no hot metal plate thing to burn dripped coffee) into a coffee cup that I pulled out of the cabinet. Time: 20 seconds.
2. Put coffee cup of coffee into microwave, heat. Time: 1:37 (I've been trying to use something other than the 0 for the last digit and I've been using the 8 for a while so now I'm on 7).
3. While coffee is heating put the following in a bowl: 1 cup old fashioned oats, 1/8 cup raisins, 1 tbsp sliced almonds, 1 tbsp brown sugar, water to cover it all. Time: 0 (since I do all this while the coffee is heating).
4. When the coffee is done switch the coffee and oatmeal. Heat/cook oatmeal. Time: 2:30 (using the 0 there).
5. Move coffee and oatmeal spoon to the table while oatmeal heats/cooks.
6. When oatmeal finishes bring bowl to table.

Overall time required to prepare breakfast? 5 minutes, max. It's easy. It's not taxing mentally. Easy to log in MyFitnessPal. Easy to eat.

454 calories. And I'll be good for 4-5 hours.

That's a Cat 3 breakfast.

Fourth, avoid sugar or sugar substitutes.

I'd have argued with this before this diet but now I'd agree that eliminating sugar seems to be helpful. As a corollary eliminating sugar substitutes also seems to help, because the sweet taste makes me miss sugar. Eliminating the taste altogether works better for me.

In 2009, my first diet, I adopted the "bike shop diet" at times. We said that if we were tired a great pick me up was getting a Hostess Twinkies and a Coke.

Bam, instant energy.

And an almost instant sugar crash.

Of course there was an easy remedy - another Twinkies and Coke.

So in 2009 I drank Diet Cokes or Diet Pepsis. One of my standby meals was jam on bread (aka "sugar on carbs"). I ate 100 calorie snack bags of sugary snacks. I had sugary protein shakes. So on and so forth.

I spent a lot of time in a bonky state, dizzy with hunger. I was working a job that required moving around a lot so that helped stave off the bonkiness. I'd sometimes walk around virtually blacked out vision-wise because of these massive head rushes when I stood up.

The reality was that I really wasn't dieting in any kind of sustainable manner.

This round of dieting (which makes it sound like I diet all the time but this is only my second diet in my life) I inadvertently left out sugar early on. I was on such a strict low goal that even a teaspoon of sugar in my coffee seemed wasteful.

So I cut out the sugar.

I also cut out the diet sodas, inadvertently. I decided separately, before the diet, that I really didn't want to pay for drinks, whether going out or even for home, so I for a while I've been drinking just water when we go out. Additionally I hadn't bought sodas or seltzer for a while from the grocery store.

The combination of not much added sugar (and no fake sugar) significant changed my energy levels. I've kept some of the same foods in the diet rotation from 2009, so many of my foods I'm eating now I ate back then. Carbs and proteins, mainly, with certain vegetables and fruits. The changes have been the elimination of regular sugar/sugar-substitutes. This has led to a much more consistent energy level.

In the low calorie days, early on, I definitely had my share of head rushes. For the first week I was fighting the normal bonkiness, with the accompanying shaking and dizziness and cold sweat. However this changed pretty quickly. By the second week of my dieting I realized that I wasn't bonking. I was hungry, okay, but I wasn't dizzy or shaking or breaking out in a cold sweat.

As the weeks went by I realized that I was getting to noon or 1 PM or even 2 PM without feeling excessively hungry. I thought it might be the lack of (added) sugar in my diet. The couple times where I had a (deliciously sinfully incredibly good tasting) sweetened coffee I had a ton of energy for a bit and either got really bonky afterward or went 1000 cal over my goal (I did that once).

So for now I'm avoiding sugar.

For those that see me downing Cokes and RockStars and coffee muffins before races you may wonder what I'll do before races. You know, I don't know, this is uncharted territory for me.

Summary

Overall my diet is pretty straight forward. A Cat 3 diet, if you will. No frills, only a few interesting out-of-the-ordinary things (for me it's the Greek yogurt smoothies I make), easy to prepare, easy to eat, no real mental energy expended.

The reality is that I may be able to extend this kind of diet for a while. I don't have aspirations to turn pro or anything but I race for fun and, trust me, it's a lot more fun when I'm not groveling at the back of the field, praying they slow down. Fitness helps, of course, but I have no idea how much training I'll be doing because I don't know what my schedule will look like even in a month or two from now.

However, regardless of fitness, being light goes a long, long way toward making races more fun. When I accelerate an extra 10 or 20 pounds of weight out of every corner it gets a bit tiring.

 Early 2010, 155 and getting fit. The red bike before it was red.

Double Peak in San Marcos, CA.

I even see off-the-bike benefits. For example carrying Junior has become easier. I had that epiphany after carrying him around a model railroad show for an hour or two. At that point I was a good 10-12 pounds lighter. Suddenly Junior, who tips the scales at about 29-30 pounds, was more like a 17-20 pound kid. That's a huge difference in carrying weight when walking around the Big E.

Another benefit is I can wear the almost new clothes I had in 2010. I only had one year where I fit those clothes and the "heavy" (bodyweight) clothes I have are pretty worn out. Now I have a stack of clothing to choose from that are virtually brand new.

I can see this round's diet being sustainable even during some decent training. I had started the diet with the expectation that I wouldn't be able to train. However, after doing some "make up rides' to expend some excess calories, I find that I'm more fit now than I was during the summer. Even just six weeks into the diet, when I did a few warmer Christmas rides, I felt great climbing the hills with lower weight and higher sustainable power. I went looking for comparisons in climbing the hill out of the complex but ran into a problem - I was pedaling with much more power in December than I was in August or whatever. I climbed the hill on Christmas Day in 0:58 or so, even slowing at the top, and in August/Sept I did it in 1:15-1:20, 2-3 mph slower.

We'll see what happens in the races. In Blackhawk Down one of the characters says, "Politics goes out the window when the bullets start flying." Likewise all this talk about weight and calories and training and stuff goes straight out the window when the race actually starts.

After that it's all about using what you got.

See you out there!

 Picture from a finish at the Rent from slightly skinnier days (2011 or 2012).

Racing - Mental Freshness

1986, somehow made the GFox flyer.

2015 marks the beginning of my 33rd season of racing.

Now, I can't boast about my palmares like many other riders. I have zero national titles (in fact I never entered a National Championship race), I have never won a race between May and August, I've never won a one day race per se (like a once-a-year race), and I routinely get shelled by brand new, never-raced-in-my-life-before riders.

But I love to race. I just love it. I've loved it since I started racing, through all sorts of trials and tribulations. This January I did a couple 3+ hour rides and a whole slew of 2 hour rides.

On the trainer.

For me I enjoyed it, but others consider a 3 hour ride on a trainer torture.

Front row in the Tour de Michigan.

So what's the secret? Why am I not burnt out on racing?

It's hard to say but it's a number of things.

First off, I love to race.
Second, I have realistic expectations.
Third, I accept that there will be off years. Years, not weeks or days or months.
Fourth, I set some long term goals.
Fifth, I accept life events that are out of my control.
Sixth, I do no structured training.
Seventh, I reassess my own abilities and do occasional honest, no-BS self assessments.

I Love to Race

I love to race. I love the technical stuff (aero, fit, stuff like that), the tactics (drafting, cornering, permutations of drafting and multiple people around me), the fitness aspect of it (when to burn what matches I have and if I burn too many can I find another match somewhere?), and finally the human part of it (some of my most satisfying races have been so because either I worked for someone or someone worked for me).

I've stayed fresh racing for most/all those 30-odd years. I've never wanted to quit racing per se. I've had a number of years where I didn't want to promote races (I've promoted races since 1994, mainly the Bethel Spring Series), but I always, always, always wanted to race.

1988?

Marty, in the middle, just soloed to a win. I won the field sprint, Ed, to the left, got second in the sprint.

1988.

No team kit as we didn't hold a race the prior year.

I've said this before and I'll say it again. Let me do some base miles in the winter and then let me race 3-4 times a week for the summer. I'll be happy doing all my rides in races from March - September. For easier days I'd just sit in or drop off, harder days I'd attack and such, and on target days I'd try to do well.

Managing Expectations


A big part of my enthusiasm is understanding my limits or, in corporate terms, "managing expectations". I see a lot of riders quit when they hit their developmental plateau mainly because of a combination of genetics (most important), time, and focus. The rider can't accept that they're close to their genetic limits (or sometimes time limits etc) and they stop.


I understood my limitations long before powermeters existed. My best 40k TT was a 1:03:30, my fastest ever TT was a 25.5 mph 7 mile effort. In hills I get dropped by M50+ women who don't race but who are fit cyclists (M50+ is a polite way of saying "a 53 year old woman"). I did a 10k mile year early in my life and DNF 44 races or some stupid number that year. Decades ago I accepted my position as a weaker rider who could sprint and worked with that.


A newer racer asked me why I don't lose a bit more weight and do more hilly races. I asked him why he didn't lift more and make his 1000w peak a 1500w or 1800w peak. He said that was a bit ridiculous and then realized that he was asking me the same thing, albeit in a different manner.

I can't think of a better way to explain that than the following: if I was close to 0% body fat, with a lean body weight of about 130 lbs, my w/kg number would still be in the 3.6 w/kg range. This is at ZERO percent body fat, 40+ lbs lighter than I am now.

The reality is that I won't be a 4 or 5 w/kg rider, ever. Heck, even if I doped I wouldn't get very far. I understand and accept that. That other racer took some time to assimilate what I said, to accept that it's not realistic for me to try to become a 4 or 5 w/kg racer. Ironically he used to be an elite athlete in a different sport, looking like a sprinter, all muscular and stuff.

A different way of looking at it is to say that my FTP is so poor that even a 50% increase (talk about a lot of doping!) would only put me in middling Cat 2 or "a pretty strong Cat 3" territory.

Crashes/Risk


Others also stop because they can't handle racing in a field, have a crash, and stop because they don't understand what happened in the crash. Without understanding why a crash happened (and potentially how to prevent it) it's very easy to become so neurotic about crashing that racing becomes impossible.

It's critical to learn and practice field/peloton skills, things like bumping and touching wheels and such. Without those drills there's a huge unknown area of riding that you can't possibly understand. If you practice bumping and touching wheels then those situations become a little less foreign.

It's like driving a car - if you never lose control of the car then you won't know what it's like to do so. I went to a parking lot in the snow to learn how to drive in the stuff, doing laps in a school parking lot for literally 2 or 3 hours one night. Fortunately everything went safely and it gave me a lot of time to learn. I did the same with my first girlfriend when I was helping her learn to drive. The first few times she let the car go it was a bit scary because she didn't have any of the right reactions in her head. After an hour or two of drills in a deserted, snow-covered parking lot (including a drive by and short conversation with a curious police officer), she was fine. She counter steered into skids, she could modulate the brake pedal much better (pre-ABS days), and she could pump the pedal if the tires locked under braking.

We were on the road, maybe a day later, when the tail end of the car went sideways while on a pretty busy road. My girlfriend immediately counter steered and regained control of the car. I was a bit freaked out but she'd handled it just fine. All the practice she'd just done came in handy and we continued on without a problem.

In bike racing I've had my share of crashes. It took until 2009 to break a bone, in a pretty hard shunt in a training race. Someone swerved across my front wheel so hard it was practically horizontal before I realized what was going on. I actually can't believe the rider could swerve so rapidly so far, it was that quick and violent.

Putting a good face on.

I understood what happened, I understood how I could have avoided it, and I've made some minor adjustments to how I race based on the crash.

However that was my first broken bone. Risk-wise I know that this kind of incident will virtually never happen. I accept that risk. The Missus trusts my judgment, both during races and in situations like this where I assess risk. Without her blessings, without a deep understanding of the risk assessment thought process, I'd have been a racing statistic as well.

Accepting Underperforming Seasons


Another aspect is my Zen approach to a season, if you will. After about 10 years of racing I got much more casual about writing off a season. I have an idea of how I'll go for the year based on March and April and if it's not that great then so be it, it's not a big deal. If the season doesn't start well I don't think it's worth it to train like mad to have a good August or whatever. I did that once or twice and the amount of work and sacrifice to have a few weeks of good racing just wasn't worth it.

In 2012 at Bethel in the last race I stopped after a couple laps to say hi to Junior.

Absolutely worth it.

If I'm underperforming (meaning any year except the ones where I've been on fire), I try to have fun with the racing, do what I can, and think about a better year in the future. In 2014 I barely trained and I had fun until I had 3 DNFs in a row in August. This year I'm almost as light as I was in my second best year 2010 and I have a lot of hours (for me) in Dec and Jan. I have no idea what my season will be like but I'll find out in March and take it from there.

Long Term Goals

I try to set realistic goals for myself. My last major goal thought was in 2010, when I simply wanted to see how I did. In 2011 I told myself no serious racing until 2017 when my racing age would be M50+, so I essentially wrote off 6 seasons immediately (because we wanted to start a family and I figured only when our kid went to kindergarten would I be able to train a bit). This year I hope to do okay, and if my first races go okay then I'll think about specific target races in the summer.

My long term goals include stuff like actually winning a summer race, something I've never done, or being in a break that makes it to the finish. I'd like to be able to pull. I'd like to be able to help teammates. I'd like to be part of some spectacular teamwork during a race.

Accept Life Events


One thing is my racing has gone up and down naturally with life events and I never really fought these ups and downs. When I was single/dating but otherwise not committed (no kids, no marriage, etc, although I did own a bike shop) I was racing tons, training tons, etc. All my money went into bikes. I had this reverse snob thing going where if a rider's car was worth more than the bike rack on top of it then they weren't as "hard core". I realize now that that's not necessarily true, but at the time I was driving a $1 car with a $500 roof rack and about a $1250 bike on said rack.

$1 car, $500 rack, $1250 bike.

There were years where things were tougher outside of cycling, like when my mom was sick and then passed on 3 years later. I started that period, 2000-2003, weighing about 155-160. I spent all my free time with my mom (my parents were living overseas when she was diagnosed so she moved in with me for 2+ years - I brought her to all her appointments etc for a while). Toward the end we had round the clock bedside time with her, taking shifts sitting next to her and talking or whatever, and I really didn't think about the bike much. When my mom died I was 215 lbs or so and rode maybe once every 3 weeks, still managing to place here and there (Cat 3 Crit Champ 2002) even though I had to size up my bike (to a size M Giant) so my legs wouldn't hit my gut as hard. I was so fat I didn't recognize myself in a picture from that era.

About 200-205 lbs in this picture, spring 2004.

Note the size M Giant - I had to use it to keep my gut from getting in my legs' way.


I had promised my mom to win the Bethel Spring Series and the Cat 3 Crit Championships just before she lost awareness of her surroundings. After she died I trained hard again, driven to do well. It took a couple years to win Bethel (two Series before I could win it, and then I barely managed), another year passed before I got the (2006) Cat 3 Crit gold medal, but I did it.

No Structured Training


I've gotten burnt out on training so I don't do structured training. The last time I did intervals with any regularity was probably 1990 or something, in school. Nowadays most of my attempts at intervals blow up after 20 or 30 seconds. I JRA when I train, do whatever I feel like, I motivate thinking about racing. I train only so I can race.


2010, best year since 1992. 155-158 lbs.

Photo John Specht

Readjust Based On Changes

Over the years I've lost a solid 20% of my top end speed in a sprint. I virtually never break 40 mph nowadays and often I'm sprinting at only 37-38 mph.

A good sprint toward the end of the SUNY Purchase Tuesday Night Sprints.

I remember being upset that I didn't break 44 mph in any of the 10 or so sprints I did that night. A fast sprint for me there (slight downhill, cross tailwind) was 46 mph, and there were a number of riders that were as fast as me.

For the past few years I've struggled to sprint well against the 3s but I can hold my own with the M45s. I'm starting to accept that and am starting to do more M45 races.
 For me this is huge, as I still don't think of myself as a Masters racer even though I'm closer to 50 years old than 40.

This clip was the Nutmeg State Games from 2014, same course as the above link from 2006. I missed the break (teammate and former M35 Canadian Cross champ in it - he won), I missed the chase (Frank McCormack, ex-pro, driving it), but I could handle the field sprint. This was the first Saturday of June. On the same course against the 3s I got something like 20th in the field sprint, and I was so far behind the winners I didn't even see what team they raced for.


In terms of training for the above race I actually did very little, due to life stuff. I rode 50 min in the week of June prior to the race. 8 hours in all of May. 7 hours in all of April. I knew I didn't have much training in my legs so I did what I could. I suffered here and there, I took joy every time I could make an effort without shelling myself, and getting to the field sprint was an unexpected bonus. Winning it was an absolute shock.

Goals for 2015

Right now my goals for 2015 are as follows:

1. Do reasonably well in the Cat 3-4 races in the Aetna Nutmeg Spring Series. And promote some good races in that Series since I'm the promoter.

2. Try to win a summer race. This is a forever repeating goal so it's automatically on the list.

3. Be strong enough to finish or partake in some of the races that I couldn't finish or partake in during the last few years. In 2013, for example, I was in at the end of the CCAP Kermis. In 2014 I got shelled a lap or so into the race.

4. Help others (teammates, friends) in races.

Danbury Crit, 1991? I got 4th, another summer race I didn't win.

Training - Diet, Riding, Life

I keep starting posts and then leaving them because I didn't finish them. Then they get sort of stale because of time related events in the post and it becomes one of those "well there is a story in there so maybe I'll pull it out and do that bit as a post some other time."

Then it becomes another one of the 200+ drafts I have (there are 213 to be exact, with 1219 published posts).

So whatever I get through right now I'm going to post.

Diet

First, diet. I've plateaued pretty hard and it's a bit demoralizing. I keep reminding myself that I'm 17 or 16 or 15 pounds lighter than I was when I started (note how that number shrank a bit as I listed it?). Still, though, to be on the cusp of breaking the 160 lbs barrier then sitting at 162 lbs is not really inspiring.

The thing is that I'm still pretty fat - using the "what do the various body fat % look like?" chart I'm still in the 20-22% fat area. My lean weight seems to be in the low-mid 130s, so 10% body fat would mean 145 lbs or so.

That number is sort of insane.

Still, though, it means that I ought to be able to get into the 15% range, and that would be in the 150 lbs range. That's pretty low but it seems sort of attainable, maybe as a long term goal.

For now, though, I want to drop into the 150s, like 155 lbs or 157 or something in that range.

The problem is that I've gotten used to going over the calorie count and then riding to burn some stuff off. I think, though, that I've lost some muscle mass, especially in my upper body. The problem is that muscle burns energy and losing that mass means my body has reduced its energy requirements. This requires me to adjust the calorie goals downward, but I don't know by how much.

For now, though, I'm just trying to get back into the right caloric range each day, not going over by 300 or 400 calories consistently. I've even upped my number to make the goal more attainable, from 1510 cal to 1690 cal per day.

Riding

The upside to overeating, relatively speaking, is that I've been riding a lot to try and burn off some calories. I'm feeling better on the bike, surprisingly so, which means that I'm really overeating. When I'm dieting aggressively I really can't ride well because I have no energy, so if I'm riding well it means I'm eating way too much.

However, with my weight in the lower 160s, it's reasonably acceptable. I want to be in the 150s but if I can ride like this then that's kind of neat.

I'm starting to dig through my kits to find size S shorts and size S or M jerseys. Size M jerseys seem a bit baggy now and even the very tight new fangled Verge Triumph size M (it fits super snug) is wrinkly. Snug, okay, but wrinkly. I never thought I'd fit into it and now I want to see what a size S is like on me.

Go figure.

A huge benefit to losing weight is that I can sit back a bit more on the saddle. The main reason I sit forward is because my legs hit my gut. Only when I get skinny can I sit back a bit more on the saddle - that's really only happened in 2010 recently, and now, again, in early 2015. It's cool and I like it.

In 2012, I think I was almost 180 lbs.

Photo by Heavy D I think.

In 2010 at about 158 lbs.

Photo by RTC.

Life

The biggest thing for me has been Junior. He's progressing in leaps and bounds.

One of the things that really surprised me is his reading memory stuff. We read a book or two to him each evening before he goes to sleep. Often I'll read the same book or two before his nap.

One of his favorites is "Goodnight Train", a book about a somewhat psychedelic train that kids get on and everyone, including the train, goes to sleep at the end of the book. It's great to read it and have him get quieter and more still and have his eyes fluttering shut and watching him pass out.

The other night the Missus was reading it to him but with a twist - she left the last word off of each sentence. I was a bit worried because I couldn't remember the words, and I was reading this to him all the time. I figured it would frustrate him to not know the words.

Because we still have a video monitor in his room I could hear the Missus reading to him. To my absolute shock he completed all the sentences with the right word, albeit pronounced like a kid. It was so cute to listen to him finish the sentence.

"The goodnight train gets set to…"
"…roll"
"It's being shined and filled with..."
"…coal"
"Wash the cars off with a…"
"…hose"
"Scrub the engine's dirty…"
"…nose"

Incredible.

A different day we were at the supermarket, Junior and myself. He was a bit stir crazy from the cold weather. Temps in the single digits and teens made it a bit cold to go out and play so instead I let him run around a bit in the store.

At some point I figured we really ought to get going but he wanted to keep playing. When this happens I typically pick him up and distract him. This time I carried him over my shoulder and tickled him a bit. He squealed with delight, laughing that honest kid laugh, the one that only kids have, so full of joy and completely unrestrained. I could see all the grandmother and mother types turning and smiling and saying nice things as we went by them.

I realized that I was so lucky to share that moment with him, along with all the other ones that I've had with him.

When he gets a bit fussy I sit with him and pull a blanket around us and ask him about all the things he did earlier in the day.

"Did you go pee in the potty?"
He'd nod affirmatively. "Sticker a Dusty Crophopper."
"Did you go to the store?"
"Running. Help Daddy with numbers."
"Did you walk on the curb?"
"Wait for the car!"
"Did you eat pancakes in the car?"
"Uh-huh."
"Did you make a tower with Legos?"
"Orange and blue and red."
"You were so good today, you did so many great things."

This calms him down and he starts talking about something, random stuff, stuff that stuck in his head.

"Lightning is a red racer. Fire truck a siren a police car. What is dar? Yaby (library). Bus da Legos."

It's times like this that it's hard to think of my diet or training or whatever as important. It is, sort of, but at the same time it's so inconsequential.

Well, maybe not. Over the weekend we went to the Big E where they had a hobby railroad show. Everything was at adult height, so at my chest or so.

The problem was that this was just above Junior's head. The solution? Carry him everywhere.

We were there a solid couple hours and Junior is now almost 30 lbs. Normally my back would be protesting loudly within 5 or 10 or 15 minutes but not that day.

Then I realized something.

I weighed 17 or 18 pounds less than I did just a couple months ago. This made Junior feel like he weighed just 11 or 12 pounds, not 29 pounds. It ended up that although I was tired after carrying him around I wasn't in pain or anything.

So I guess the diet and stuff does help taking care of Junior, even though I didn't realize it at first. It's all a big circle, one thing affecting another. That makes me wonder.

I wonder what the race season will bring.

Training - Diet Plateau

I'm still here.

It's been busy at home with all sorts of stuff going on. One thing that I've done is sacrificed a lot of stuff in order to ride. It means less blogging (as if I was blogging a lot before), less working on the bike (aka I've done zero mechanical stuff), less everything that I do in my free time except for the riding bit.

I'm focusing on the riding not because I want to get in shape but because I'm still working the diet angle of things. I think I'm inadvertently getting in shape, if only because I'm pedaling.

A friend said that his problem with riding has to do with rpms.

"Rpms?"

"Yeah, the problem is that I have a lot of zero rpm days."

Ah. I have the same problem.

I looked at my Strava the other day and apparently I did NINE hours last week. That's as much as a summer month in 2014, and I did it in a week in the dead of winter.

Okay, so I had a zero hour week also.

A couple weeks ago I hit a rough spot, consistently up a couple pounds, after staying at 166-168 lbs for a week plus. Something happened in my body, I think it was adjusting or something (maybe it was the non-riding?), because without me taking any drastic action the weight started to shed again.

Now I've been plateaued at about 161 lbs, so it's 5-7 lbs below my previous plateau. More significantly I'm about 17 lbs my start point 60-odd days ago. I've basically lost the weight of my bike at this point.

I remember these plateaus from before. I don't know how they work, why it happens, but it seems that my body sort of resets at different weights. I hope to drop one more plateau, in the 156-158 range, and it would be awesome if I could hit a second plateau, perhaps in the 151-153 range. In a month I should be able to lose 6-7 lbs. In two months, maybe 10-12 lbs total. Weight loss tapers so it's easier to lose the first 10 lbs versus the last 10 lbs.

Dropping below 150 would be dream, but really, at this point, any additional weight loss is a bonus.

My food/diet has been pretty consistent through the whole process. I've been eating virtually the same meals 80% of the time; sometimes I adjust the portion, to reduce calories (and then to return it to my "regular" portion). It's easy on a number of levels. In MyFitnessPal, my recent foods show up at the top of the list. With only a few standard meals (oatmeal, chicken and rice, recently steak) I only have to scroll down a bit, check a bunch of boxes, and I have my meal in place.

(Note: on the mobile version this isn't the case, so I try to add foods on the laptop versus the phone.)

Food adding page - I've checked my 454 calorie breakfast for this morning.

With my less aggressive approach I have a 1690 calorie daily budget, based on a 161 lbs weight.

Earlier I was trying to attain as low as 1300 cal.

You can see that I had recently eaten some of Koichi's leftovers (mayo!). Toward the bottom of my recent list you can see that I had a smoothie, I think it was a few days ago; otherwise I normally have the oatmeal. Junior even tells me it's time for me to get my "cereal and raisins".

I often "pre-add" my foods, especially if I don't know them. I put them in before I eat them to get an idea of my overall caloric landscape. This has been significant a few times where I realized that I simply couldn't afford to eat certain foods. The numbers put a stark reality to the food, versus looking at the food on the table and thinking, "Well, how bad could it be?"

Horrible.

I recently changed my overall strategy to include a bit more fat. This is why my breakfast list was a bit wacky, in the past I didn't eat stuff that Koichi didn't want, I either tossed them (if they were older) or saved them for later (if fresh). t realized that I wasn't getting the nutrients I needed, as evidenced by some annoying sore things in my mouth. With a better diet, a couple multi-vitamins, they disappeared in a few days.

After that I decided to include more fats. Previously I'd been limiting myself to about 30-50g of fat per day. Now it's higher, typically 40-70g of fat. I'm still eating carbs and such, I'm not limiting myself on really anything.

Except sugar.

I've realized now that sugar really makes me feel hungry, it gives me really inconsistent energy levels, and it's something that seems to affect me pretty significantly. Also, in my physical, I had yet another "pre-diabetic" level of some hormone thing. For years the doctor has asked me if I actually fasted before the blood test, and for years I had. Apparently my blood sugar thing isn't quite right.

So, with the energy level stuff, the hunger stuff, and the blood test stuff, I've been pretty motivated to avoid sugar. I've had my coffee black all but three times in the last 60-odd days, and only once did I prepare it anywhere near my normal "I like a little coffee with my sugar and cream" ratios. That night was the night I lost track of time as I hammered away on the trainer for 3 hours, couldn't get to sleep for another hour or two, and basically wrecked my schedule for the next week.

I can't remember if it was the same night I actually had some desert.

Whatever, it's not a good thing.

I have to think about my food approach for races. Normally I load up on sugar, getting that cheap/fast energy and sacrificing any longterm stuff. I'm thinking now that a less sugar oriented thing might be better.

One thing that I've done is had a couple of the organic pouches we get for Junior. They are fruit and veggie based, they're easy to digest, and they seem relatively healthy. It may be that I'll be eating them instead of a traditional gel or whatever.

So that's the food stuff...

For now the rest of my life is the same.

I'm still looking for work. I'm starting to get the Aetna Nutmeg Spring Series thing going (replacing Bethel Spring Series), with two scheduled races and two more potential race dates, stuff I've worked on since last fall. The site is new and obviously not yet finished, but the ANSS site should be better shortly.

I'm also starting to settle into some of my Carpe Diem Racing obligations. A big thing is a fund raising ride in June, up in northern MA. Although it's primarily to benefit the Northfield Mount Hermon School, it'll be open to anyone. It sounds like it'll be a hoot, to be honest.

Other events include the White Plains Crit in June, the Tokeneke Classic Road Race, and a still-to-be-confirmed July 4th race in Bethel. I hope to be helping with the Aetna Silk City Cross race again, and there may be another event or two as well.

With all that it means that CDR will be continuing as before. I had some doubts about this recently so for me to decide this is pretty significant. However, this means paying some recurring bills, like the unemployment things, the liability insurance, regular stuff that any employer has to pay. CDR is a high volume, low net type business. If it wasn't for the extra events CDR did throughout the year it would have been a massively losing proposition holding just Bethel. Hopefully this year I meet my goal of netting (pre-tax) $500 per week/event; last year at Bethel it was more like losing $500-1000/week, and that's been consistent for a few years.

In the background through all of this there's Junior, who is growing in leaps and bounds mentally and physically. He's much more interactive, even compared to a few months ago. I've realized that I place him first and foremost, before anything else. I've walked away from people mid-sentence to attend to him (typically if he's getting into something he shouldn't, not when he's doing normal stuff). He can get into things pretty well now, like getting a small step stool to access the sink (and running water), opening doors, etc.

This is the set up he's playing with now (Pops built it with his suggestions).

Training - Relative Power On My Trainer

Today I had a decent food day. I guess that's the "dieting bike racer" in me. It's strangely empowering to do this, although I have to admit that I haven't had motivation since 2009 to diet. And that time was the first time I ever really, truly dieted.

Anywho…

I got to 8 PM with something like 250 cal left of my 1510 cal budget, so that was good. Yesterday I ended the day at something like 100 cal over (so about 1610) then proceeded to eat 580 cal at night. That put me at a whopping 2300 cal for the day, literally the most I've eaten in a single day in, what, 26 or something days? November 17th, for what it's worth.

Today I knew I wanted to eat just a bit more and I had the chance to hop on the bike. Therefore I got to ride and eat a bit more.

On the ride I remembered a bike forums question where someone asked how much power it would take to go 88 rpm in a 53x17. He added that he rode that fast for 30 minutes and it made him work up "a good sweat". I'd guessed in the mid-300 watt range, definitely a really high wattage for anyone that doesn't race. Talk about sweating, right?

He later corrected it to a 53x19, which is still impressive. I took some pictures of the SRM in the 53x17 (just for kicks) and then a slew while in the 53x19. The trainer is pleasantly consistent, although I could feel if I was in the lower end of the rpm range (meaning I could be going 88 rpm and nudge the power a bit without making the computer say 89 rpm). Still, though, the pictures are worth something.

53x17@88rpm, 378w. Yikes.

53x19@88rpm, 288w. Still yikes for me.

53x19,@89rpm, 295w.

53x19@88rpm, 294w.

53x19@88rpm, 297w.

What's funny (or not depending on your point of view) is that these efforts to take the pictures really killed me. I spent a few minutes trying to take these pictures. Many of the deleted pictures were illegible for one reason or another, like the flash obscured the whole screen, no flash meant it was a blurry mess, or I was at the wrong rpm, whatever. My efforts in producing even the 280w power stuff was probably the reason why I climbed off short of my planned 2 hour ride. My legs just went empty after about 1:30 and I really couldn't justify twiddling along past 1:45.

The heart rates in the pictures are pretty low but it's because the efforts were anaerobic and my heart rate wasn't climbing relative to my effort - the heart rate lagged pretty hard. I looked down once, after uploading one or two of the pictures, and my heart rate was 112 bpm. During the pictures I felt asphyxiated, like I was suffocating.

Now I've rewarded myself with some food, 420 cal worth.

A side thought. I can handle less or no sugar in food. But to skip salt? No way. I've gotten my oatmeal down to no brown sugar, 1/4 cup raisins, and it's otherwise plain oatmeal. Coffee? Black now. But my snack right now was 150g of chicken (skinless, roasted), weighed on a scale, with 140 cal of green beans. If you check around you'll notice that's two cans of green beans. I sprinkle a nice bit of salt, some spices, and that's good enough for me.

And my blood pressure is fine at the moment. I just had a physical and they tagged me at 112/60 or something like that (and I was looking after a very active Junior during the physical so I wasn't just relaxing in peace and quiet). I still need to get my bloodwork done. It'll be interesting to see the numbers (hematocrit, hemoglobin, and cholesterol) as I haven't had a physical in something like three? years. On the positive side I think I was 14 pounds heavier when I went there last.

Of course I was 10 pounds heavier less than four weeks ago, so it's the last four weeks that have made a difference in my weight.

But whatever, it's all good.

Training - Unexpected Bonus

As I've mentioned in the past few posts, I've been dieting steadily for three weeks now. I've noticed that I usually have a couple-few "easy" days, where it's easy to stay at or under my goal, and then a day or two where it's really hard. This cycle repeats itself pretty consistently.

Today's been one of those hard days. I struggled all day after consuming a massive-to-me 1030 calories before noon. I'm ending the day a little above my recently-revised 1510 cal goal. I've been cold and getting massive head rushes when I stand up, so I'm definitely in an aggressive energy-depleted state.

This isn't the unexpected bonus that I allude to in the title though, and I want to mention a couple more things before I get to the unexpected bonus.

Two days ago I breezed through the day falling asleep perfectly satisfied with my 1365 calorie day. Yesterday, although I ate 1700 calories worth, I rode for almost two hours, burning off a good chunk of that. My powermeter told me I burned about 900 calories, so that's a huge net loss day since I definitely burned more than the 190 calories I went over my 1510 calorie goal.

My weight's been steadily declining. I started my diet in mid November weighing in at a hair under 179 lbs. This morning, for the second time in the last three weeks, I saw a low 169 lbs reading. I want to be at least another 10 pounds lower at 159 lbs. Based on my current progress it would take at least three weeks, although I expect my weight loss to taper so it may take four or five weeks.

If I could get another 5 or 10 pounds lower, hitting 155 lbs or lower, I'd be super psyched. That would be another three weeks minimum, and realistically it may not happen. I need four to six weeks of training to get to some kind of fitness and I know I'm going to lose much of my training time before the first races of the year.

In 2010, my (recent) banner year, I saw a couple readings at 149 lbs (meaning that was at the low range of my weight cycle if you will), I steadied at a weak but light 152 lbs before I started training, and I hit the season at 155 lbs or so and feeling as strong (or weak?) as normal. I stopped weighing myself regularly after I saw 155-158 lbs every time I stopped on the scale.

If I can get close to that I'll be totally psyched.

So what's the unexpected bonus?

My cycling legs are starting to come back.

See, to make my admittedly aggressive calorie goals, I've resorted to eating a bit more if I'm hungry, then getting on the bike to burn at least as many calories. If I go 200 calories over then I want to burn, as indicated on the powermeter, at least 400 calories.

(How do I get calories from my powermeter? By using kilojoules, which happen to be about the number of calories burned on a bike. Although a kJ is not a calorie, the human body's inefficiencies end up making it so. On a bike ride a kJ of work is equal to anywhere from .95 to about 1.2 calories. Reference stuff here. I figure that trying to use the actual conversion wouldn't be easy, and I'm probably in the "more efficient" side of things, meaning I'm probably using .95 calories per kJ of work. Therefore to make things totally clear I'd like to do twice as many kJ of work as my caloric overages. If I eat 200 cal more food, I want to burn 400kJ on the bike.)

At first, with a 1790 calorie daily goal, staying under my number wasn't very hard. I recalculated after I lost about 6 pounds, using a more aggressive set of variables. I ended up with a much too aggressive 1260 calorie daily goal. After two days of that ridiculousness I redid the numbers using a slightly less aggressive set of variables. This gave me 1510 calories per day. It's aggressive but manageable on the good days.

(The most important variable is goal loss per week. Right now I'm letting MyFitnessPal decide my caloric needs and I'm using a 1.5 lbs/week weight loss goal. The reality is that I'm losing almost twice that number. I'd be happy with 2 lbs/week, but when I used that goal MyFitnessPal told me 1260 cal/day. I revised my goal to 1.5 lbs/week and got 1510 cal. On the intake side I'm very strict about recording everything I eat. It seems to be working.)

On the less than good days I still want to hit about 1700 calories. This 200 calorie overage means I need to do about 400 kJ of work on the bike, and that's about an hour of riding.

What's happened is that with my aggressive caloric goals, I tend to go over regularly. I plan my food, entering the food (and related calories) before I eat them. Therefore when I'm still hungry at 6 PM I know what I am about to eat and I typically choose to eat food after checking with the Missus if it's okay for me to do a trainer ride.

Then I eat my calories and get on the bike.

At first my rides were as pathetic as pathetic can be. I struggled to turn over the pedals, and on one particularly bad ride I actually struggled to stay in the 90-100 watt range. It takes me almost an hour to do 400 kJ of work right now. In contrast I might do 600-700 kJ of work in an hour long criterium or 500 kJ in an hour of training.

Significantly, because of my aggressive calorie goals, I've resorted to riding the bike more than I expected.

Yesterday I had yet another caloric overage day. By early evening I was sitting at about 1400 calories, good if I stayed there, but I had some really strong hunger pangs. I decided to go for it, eat a bit (300 calories), and then get on the bike.

Incredibly I didn't feel horrible on the bike. I found myself holding 160-170 watts for long stretches of time (for me that's 5-10 minutes). I did ease to super low watts, like 90-100 watts, but the harder bits surprised me. With no recent training, with the low daily caloric intake, this really shocked me.

So that's the unexpected bonus - feeling okay on the bike.

I'm not strong for sure, definitely not strong, but better than "weak". Last night I kept going until I realized it was after my self-decided "get off the bike" time. I got in 1:55 on the bike and climbed off feeling fresh and (relatively) energetic.

Bonus? I at 200 calories over but did almost 900 kJ of work. Even using my 2x ratio I did well, and the reality is that I ended somewhere like 600 calories under my goal number for the day. That's a good sixth of a pound of fat worth of calories, give or take.

Back to today. I'm 100 cal over but I think that's all I can expect. I don't want to ride so I'll leave it as it is. Net net, for the last week I've made strong progress so it's all good.

Goal visualization. Me at 155-158 lbs at the end of 2010. In the picture I'm wearing 29" waist jeans. Right now I'm in 31" waist jeans, and I was wearing 33" last winter.

Interviewing Phil Keoghan at Interbike 2010.

Picture by Julie Kelly

Training - Weight Loss Stuff

Back in 2009-2010 I embarked on a weight loss program that resulted in a March 2009 -> March 2010 weight loss of about 40 pounds. I dropped from about 190-200 lbs (between 2004 and 2009 if I hit 200 lbs I'd start thinking I "really need to ride a bit") to 155-158 lbs.

Forty pounds.

That's more than a completely full 20 pound LP tank for a grill.

It's the weight of two reasonably light road bikes.

It's 40 one pound packages of ground beef.

It's 20 packages of the two pound family pack of chicken parts.

It's a whole lotta weight.

The weight loss absolutely changed my racing.

At Bethel, at my new weight, on the non-aggressive laps, I often dragged the brakes to keep my speed in check. Instead of doing 400-800w to get up the hill, I was doing 300-500w, even with the brake dragging.

On the fast laps I could ride through the field and off the front.

My sustained power was still suspect, as that seems to be an overall genetic limitation of mine, but I had so much reserves, due to the low weight, that I seemed to have much more power.

(The reality is that with my weight loss my FTP dropped a solid 10%, my max sprint power dropped 200-300w, but the lighter weight more than made up for it. The only place I lost out was on descents - missing 40 pounds of mass really slowed me down on fast descents. I found myself frantically sprinting down hills trying to stay with riders I normally rocketed past on the same hill.)

After a solid season of racing I upgraded to Cat 2. I'd never been a 2 and it'd been a goal of mine for 25 years, so I took the opportunity and upgraded. One thing I didn't reveal at the time was that we'd decided to start a family. My thought was that I may never get the chance to upgrade again.

Then, in order to eliminate any temptation (I didn't want to distract myself from the family thing), I purposely gave myself zero goals for 2011. Without goals I had no motivation, and without motivation I didn't even do a lot of my JRA ("just riding along") rides.

2011 was less than successful in two ways. First, as a result of having zero goals I really had no fitness and therefore I had no real results. Second, the family never started per se, and my zero goal season ended up a "season pas", a season without. I downgraded back to Cat 3 sometime in 2011.

Of course Junior arrived in 2012 and then my priorities changed. I was glad that I took that Cat 2 upgrade because for a while, even now, training and racing enough to earn the upgrade again seemed highly unlikely, at least if I wanted to be a good dad and husband.

Fast forward to 2014 and I had gained back a good half of that 40 pound loss. I didn't train much for a couple years, doing in a month what most races do in a week. I prefer to spend time with Junior than on the bike so a nice Saturday afternoon means, to me, an hour or two at the playground, not an hour or two on the bike.

My results suffered accordingly. I could win field sprints, which is sort of normal, but in straight out Cat 3 races I really struggled just to finish races. When the field collectively dropped the hammer I was usually one of the first ones spit out the back.

Racing is fun, but getting shelled 4 or 5 minutes into a race isn't fun.

I don't foresee suddenly having a ton of time to train, but I can see myself losing weight. As a teammate so astutely pointed out, I don't need time to diet. I need time to train.

So, three weeks ago, I started on a diet sort of like the one I went on in Oct of 2009. It's calorie centric, focused on sacrificing everything to lose weight. My thought is that I can adjust my diet after, but I know I won't spend a ton of time researching and preparing foods. I am also trying to avoid diet foods, except one or two here and there (non-fat Greek yogurt for example). No artificial sweeteners, just judiciously picked foods.

And the weight started to come off.

My diet isn't complicated, and it's probably not ideal, but it works for me. I need the following from a diet:
1. Not much food prep. I prefer not to spend a lot of time preparing food. To me 5 minutes is a lot of time.
2. Easy to log foods, meaning I'm not eating 10 or 15 little things at a time. I prefer a meal to have three or four "things" that I log. I use MyFitnessPal to track food. I have a smartphone so I can log food even when we're out.
3. I need stuff that makes me feel relatively full.
4. Beyond a basic set of tastes I don't care what I eat.
5. I learned that I don't really need (or want) sugar.

When I first started the diet I remembered a few things.
1. The first few days really, really suck. I was literally shaking with hunger sometimes (bonking? maybe coming off of a sugar thing?)
2. Once I got past the first few days I could go a while while hungry and not mind.
3. I tend to be aggressive with calories for a few days (1000-1400 cal) then have a bad day (1800-1900 cal). This is okay since overall my caloric intake is much lower.
4. Not having sugar sugar, like in my coffee etc, really levels out my energy levels.

The first week of the diet sort of taught me what I forgot about dieting, it sort of set a new baseline for my body, and it readjusted my internal energy level.

I definitely noticed a solid drop in energy, which is only natural when my calorie intake got cut by a good 30-50%. My hands and feet were pretty consistently cold, but I didn't mind. I still warm up as soon as I get moving, so doing the slow trot-jog next to Junior for an hour is doable.

I'm best when I make a set of meals. I have two current "routines" - oatmeal or a chicken/rice thing. The oatmeal is really filling - a cup of oatmeal (uncooked), a quarter cup raisins, a tablespoon of almond slices, and a tablespoon of brown sugar. Add a bunch of water, microwave, done. It takes me 10 minutes from start to finish, meaning until the bowl is clean in the sink. I usually have this once a day, sometimes twice. Sometimes I do 3/4 cup instead of a full cup, but I learned the hard way that I get hungry much earlier with the slightly smaller meal.

(And as an aside that exact one cup oatmeal thing fueled me today from 6:30 AM, which is when I finished the oatmeal, to 3:30 PM, when I got home from working an event. I had two little paper cups of black coffee during that time.)

The chicken is sort of similar. I cook the chicken in batches (last batch was 1.75 lbs of boneless and skinless chicken breast), I know about the serving size, and I add rice that I've cooked and divided into separate containers. It takes about 4 minutes to get something to eat and 2:30 of those 4 minutes is the microwave heating up the food. It's easy to log since I eat the same chicken/rice meal typically twice a day.

I'm like my dad in that I can eat the same food over and over again. At home I've had either the oatmeal or the chicken for most of my meals over the 2+ weeks we've been home. I totally don't mind. When we're out then I try to figure out good things, typically things that I understand/know, like 100g of chicken, etc. For Thanksgiving we went to my dad's and I carefully doled out, on a scale, 100g of turkey here and there.

I also have turned to black coffee. Those that know me know that I like my sugar with a little coffee and cream so it's a huge change. However, with my weight loss goal in mind, black coffee is perfectly acceptable. I drink less of it, fine, but it's no longer the calorie bomb I usually have. I also don't have the rapid up/down thing that comes with a couple teaspoons of sugar (used to be a couple tablespoons per mug).

How is the diet so far?

I started at 179 lbs, in mid-November (Nov 17 to be precise). I've been at 170 for two days so that's pretty consistent for my current weight. I typically drop, plateau, drop, plateau. My goal is to get under 160, and into the low/mid-150s if possible.

In terms of health at 179 I'm probably, realistically, at about 28-30% fat, meaning I'm in the obese range. My lean body weight is probably in the 127-130 pound range.

This means that at 170 I'm more like 25%. At 160 I should be about 20%. At 150 15%. 140 lbs would be 10%, which is about when I'd be pretty skinny. In 2010 I saw a few 149 lbs reading but I was too weak and ended up gaining a bit of weight.

There's an image here that has some good pictures illustrating the different levels of body fat in men. The images seem pretty close to what my weight/fat% I outlined above. I am between the 30% and 25% right now.

I think 150 lbs would be very hard to hit, 140 lbs pretty impossible in my current life, but 155 lbs should be okay. It's still a bit away but I'd like to get there.

Today? 1365 calories, realistically pretty accurate. 170.7 lbs this morning, up just a touch, but I had an off day yesterday calorie-wise, and I was "off cycle" if you will.

With the pressure of the event off I hope to have some more time to ride a bit to reduce the net calories for each day.

Some more inspirational pictures:

Not a winning sprint but still a good one, Bethel in 2010.

My sprint came around in the last few weeks of that Series.

Photo by Corey Lynn Tucker.

155 lbs and pulling the A race at the Rent, 2010.

Photo by RTC I think.

155 lbs and off the front at the Keith Berger Crit in East Hartford, 2010.

I don't remember who took this.

Racing - May 29, 2012 @TuesdayTheRent

I put "Racing" because technically I raced. I paid an entry fee. I presented my license. I received a number. I pinned it on. I lined up with a bunch of other racers. I started.

And that was about it.

Two laps in I was done, shelled, finito, OTB.

Not much of a race report because there wasn't much to report.

Oh, sure, it was windy. There was a stiff headwind, stiff crosswind, and when it got strung out I had to push my own way through the molasses-like wind. I was one of the only ones to drop out, at least I was the first one, so that illustrates my level of overall form.

Ultimately though I wasn't totally shocked. On the way over to the race I told the Missus that because I really hadn't trained much this year I was treating "now" as the beginning of the season.

In other words I'd done a few hundred miles this year, I don't know how many hours but I'm guessing in the 40-50 hour range. This isn't hardly enough to be a reasonable Cat 3 racer, even for a sort of non-racer like me.

Let me clarify. Of course I love racing. I love criteriums. I love duking it out on the last lap or two of a crit. However, in the sense of a "true" racer, I'm not really that. I don't train like mad. I've given up on trying to significantly improve my climbing (making a terrible climber much much better results in a not-quite-terrible climber). I don't do 15-20 hours a week. Okay, I don't do 8-12 hours a week. I did a huge week last week and it was about 6.5 hours (meaning from Tuesday through Monday).

What this all means is that I haven't been training much. I haven't focused on diet much either, so I've gained weight. I've done all the things that a person can do to make their bike racing worse.

This, then, would be the beginning of the 2012 season for me.

I've been focusing on cadence, among other things. Back to the basics if you will. I haven't yet blocked out my gearing, relying instead on my discipline and my Sportsiiiis to remind me that I'm bogging down. If I feel the need I'll block out my gearing, maybe go down as far as the 53x15 I used as a Junior. I have some smaller track chainrings. This means I could run a 46x39 set up, as an example, or maybe a 48x39.

I want to get some hours on my legs. I simply don't have any kind of aerobic base. In the race Tuesday I was absolutely redlined at 160 bpm. At that point I started not being able to hold a good line so I eased up and dropped out of the group. As soon as I was alone and my heart rate dropped just a few beats I felt fine on the bike. I need to work on my base so that 160 bpm isn't a headspinning effort.

I need to lose weight. I had a short physical Tuesday (for which I had to fast for a bit, but that's not a valid reason for my paltry ride later that evening), and my weight is now... 178 lbs. I think I weigh more than Ryder Hesjedal and he's something like a half foot and change taller than me. I haven't focused much on diet but I am working on that.

I need to maintain my bike. It's in poor shape now, with last year's drivetrain still on there (old chain and cassettes). The bar tape, which I have to review, is a comet type tape - brillant but fading quickly. I could see a full time rider (one that trains 8-12 hours a week) replacing the tape every few weeks. I've gone over two months and the tape is played.

So what are my plans?

Cadence: I feel like I've lost my smooth pedal stroke. I haven't been riding much so my body hasn't felt the need to become more efficient. It lets me pedal squares it's so happy when I ride. I need to ride at a higher cadence in training to build suppleness. I'll work on it by riding rollers more (I want to do a 120 rpm 60 minute ride, just to prove to myself I still can). I'll use the Sportsiiiis to remind me to stay in my zone (currently set at 92-100 rpm). I'll try and spin instead of push in races.

Hours: I'll be riding the trainer more indoors while Junior is sleeping. The Missus, who really wants me to train more, is trying to allot the nice evenings for training rides. For example, Thursday evening is supposed to be nice, so she's blocked off that time so I can go ride after she comes home from work. She also pointed out that even if I get dropped in a race I ought to keep riding until I get pulled. Training is training, and if I can do a hard effort for 20 minutes, it beats not making a hard 20 minute effort.

Weight: I need to press a bit in the diet front. Losing weight is easy on paper, a simple equation:

Intake < Output

Easier said than done. When I lost 30 pounds over the 2009-2010 winter I was militant in my diet. I don't think it was the healthiest thing, but it got me to a healthier state. I flew that year, in part because of my lower weight. Granted, I did three training trips before May, but still, without the light weight I'd have been riding poorly. My average power was down 20%, my max power about 7%-8%, but I was riding stronger and better than ever.

So, yeah, Tuesday sucked. I jumped back on a couple times, got sawed off within a lap. I rolled around though, trying to keep the legs going. They felt really fatigued, really tired. Whatever I did to them in the first couple laps they didn't like, and they let me know.

I need to gather my forces. We won't make the next Tuesday so the next race we'll be at will be the Nutmeg State Games on Saturday June 9th. After that it'll be Tuesday Night Worlds on the 12th.

I've hit the Reboot button. Time to start over.

Training - Diet Update

In mid October of 2009, I embarked on a mission to lose weight.

I'd been racing obliviously at 10 pounds over my perceived weight (due to a very optimistic scale in my bathroom). When I realized that I wasn't a "svelte" 171 lbs but was in fact weighing in at 181, I decided that if I really wasn't 171, I'd become 171.

(This conveniently ignores the fact that my "171" was a "race" weight, my lightest for the year. Usually I was 10 over that, even during the summer. I usually broke a perceived 190 lbs during the winter... which really meant I was regularly climbing into the 200 pound range. It makes my perceived 200-205 in 2003 an astounding 210-215 lbs.)

I dieted.

When the weight started coming down pretty quickly, I started thinking a bit more dramatically. Some time on the calculator, doing some wattage per kilogram estimates, and I decided that I needed to do more.

Losing weight is about a net loss of calories. A pound of fat is worth about 3500 calories, so I'd have to run a deficit of 3500 calories to lose a pound of fat.

I felt like I should be 20 pounds lighter than I was in October. This means I had to lose about 70,000 calories worth of weight to hit my target.

70,000 calories.

And, to be totally honest, I'm looking for another 10 pounds. So about 100,000 calories worth of deficit.

Deficit spending, unfortunately, is harder to do when dealing with food as opposed to money. I simply had to limit my intake.

How you do that, at some level, is besides the point. True, it's not a good idea to just starve yourself (although apparently Floyd would skip eating for a day or two if he needed to "lose weight"). You need whatever nutrients. You should maintain some level of exercise so your body doesn't go into hibernation (pack on the pounds) mode. Blah blah blah.

But the bottom line? You gotta cut calories.

Period.

Since I raced well at 155-160 lbs and I've been suffering immensely for the past 5-7 years, 155 became my goal. The other thing is my BMI was usually around "obese", and "normal" would mean 159 lbs.

So my absolute minimum goal would be 159 lbs, and I'd want to be down at 155 or so.

Using a diet/calorie guide, I decided that I'd go for an 1800 calorie daily target, holding to that number until the end of the year. I'd ride whenever I felt like it. And, come 2010, I'd see where I was and adjust things (goals, methods, etc.) from there.

I didn't want to force myself to train hard because, frankly, I expected to be feeling weak and lackadaisical. Therefore I felt that both my weight and my form would decline during the remainder of the 2009 year. At the beginning of 2010 I could start tapering my weight loss and work on regaining some of that lost strength.

No one who knew me would accuse me of having a healthy diet, at least until now. For me it was an easy process - it became a game of reducing calories however I could, watching what I ate, and trying to fill up on calorically empty foods (like green beans) or at least low/no fat foods (like pasta or lean meats).

For me that meant no more fried calamari, no more full rack of ribs. No more 2 huge burgers at a time, 5 McD burgers at a time, desert every time we went out to eat, 1 pound of pasta at a sitting, big bag of peanuts "to get me through till lunch" (700 cal in that alone). No 3-4-5-6 donuts at a sitting, no full bacon/egg/cheese/bagel sandwiches.

A lot of my former life's "snacks" and meals were 1000-1500 calories EACH (!!!). My standard "calamari and ribs" would sock me a good 2000 calories, another 500-1000 if I had a desert, and that's not including the veggies drenched in butter, the garlic bread drenched in butter... you get the picture.

Instead I've been eating (and appreciating and enjoying) smarter, more efficient food. I'm usually between 1700-1900 calories per day, 35-45 grams of fat. My sodium intake is out of control, ditto carbs. Whatever, it's okay by me. I don't want to make the effort to fix those things and I don't care about it.

Little changes means big differences. I eat stuff like low cal whole grain bread. I add veggies to most of my dishes to add bulk without too many calories. Egg Beaters instead of eggs. Less sugar in each coffee. Skinless boneless chicken breast instead of a "family pack of wings" (I used to eat about 3/4 of said pack in one sitting, like 20-30 wings).

The differences add up, even with the minor things like Egg Beaters. I'm not going to even talk about the wings (which are 2+ grams of fat apiece).

3 or 4 or 5 grams of fat may not seem like a lot, but it becomes significant when it's the difference for each of 3 or 4 things at one meal. So lower fat bread, lower fat meat, lower fat "accessories", avoid certain things, etc etc.

If I'm hungry I eat, even if it'll put me over. This isn't intervals, and suffering more won't help me in the long run. I want a sustainable weight loss, not just some number I can generate by not eating for a week. I figure that starving myself isn't good, else my body will hoard everything I eat. I just try and eat better. My late night snacks are usually a banana, not a 3rd dinner.

I've been using a straight-forward calorie counting site, my-calorie-counter (which is too busy right now - I guess a lot of New Year Resolution stuff going on).

The "activities" section has a lot of stuff, and the cycling is based on (believe it or not) wattage. I usually select 150w avg since most of my rides are 170-190w, but I don't give myself those calories for the day. This means I don't say, "Hey, I rode 1500 calories worth, I can eat 1500 more". I figure the calories burnt number is optimistic so I ignore it. I'm taking more days off, yeah, and usually I end up over my calorie count when I ride, but I focus on calories in, not allegedly expended.

I did have to ease up on this "math method" when I was riding consistently in Florida. I felt the need to eat some of the family-made food, with lots of people putting lots of effort into the dishes. Unfortunately, even small servings of butter-laden food have lots of calories and lots of fat, so my caloric intake ballooned to an average of about 2400 calories a day. Those "1500 calories burned" while riding suddenly became a bit more significant.

I started to figure out what I need to eat so I don't bonk on longer rides, or so I don't lose strength over the course of a few hard days in a row. A recent addition to my book collection, courtesy my sister-in-law - Coggan and Hunter's Training With Power actually addresses this problem, so I should have some good info to work with for my next training trip.

And, yeah, this means I got a book on training. Watch for flying pigs. Snowball fights in Hell.

So far I'm pretty good - same kind of fitness as I had at the end of the summer, just a lot lighter. I could do some 2 hour rides without too much problem, but I think I need to work on the fuel thing for longer rides.

I've worked pretty steadily on the diet, and, fortunately for me, I'm seeing some results. For example, when I bent over to pick up a bag a few weeks ago, my pants fell down. Hehe. Luckily it was at my dad's house, in the driveway, at night, no lights. But still, it was kinda funny. I avoid those pants now.

And on the first of this year I finally broke through the elusive 160 pound barrier. I figure I have another 5 lbs or so to lose before it gets stupid, but it's interesting to see how the whole thing's been progressing.