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 - Merry Christmas

Yesterday and today were family days. The Missus was home from work so the three of us (her, Junior, me) spent the day together. Yesterday Junior was a bit fussy, I was absolutely exhausted, and it ends up he was probably coming down with something; today he's been running a 100-102 degree fever pretty consistently. His normal "eat everything and then ask for seconds" became more of the "pour clementines from one bowl to another".

Nonetheless, with the weather a crazy 55+ degrees F, with sun supposed to come out, the Missus encouraged me to get out for a ride. It's really unusual for me to train outside in the winter but with March/April weather… well I had to get out.

I had a last little delay as Junior wanted to lay down and snuggle with his blankets. After holding him a bit he passed out. The Missus took over when I transferred him to his bed, shooing me away to go ride.

Because the weather was unusual I'm noting what I wore:
 - Bib knickers, "roubaix" material.
 - LS base layer
 - LS insulating base layer (not wicking)
 - LS jersey
 - wind vest
 - head thing
 - my Canari winter gloves
 - regular shoes, socks
 - Sidekick booties

Maybe a better way to do it:

Head: head sock thing
Neck: Turtleneck bit from a base layer
Torso: 3 x LS jerseys, wind vest
Legs: 1 x knickers
Feet: regular socks, regular shoes, booties
Hands: regular winter gloves

I was a bit warm since I felt warm when I started down the driveway. Realistically I could have gotten rid of one of the LS layers, maybe the insulating one, and replaced it with a SS jersey. I also could have used some "roubaix"/thermal shorts - I have a full "roubaix" long sleeve + shorts skinsuit and that would have been ideal with the LS base layer and the wind vest.

But I wore what I wore and with daylight rapidly fading I headed out.

I had been fiddling with my bike in the trainer room. My tape was a wreck, I wanted to mount a second bottle, I wanted to find a way to mount a frame pump, etc. I'm also reorganizing said bike room so I've been sorting through a lot of things.

Therefore I started full a pretty good load out, a pretty good set of supplies. A tube each for the 60 mm valve front and 80 mm valve rear, and an extender to let the 60 mm work in the rear. Spare dropout. Multi tool, two of them, including an 8 mm allen wrench and a chain tool. Spare KMC Missing Links. Some other stuff.

I also Strava'd the ride with the phone. I had my SRM going (and checked the slope thing a few times to make sure the weather didn't radically affect my numbers. Our unheated basement, at 64 degree or so, is pretty close to the 55 degrees or so outside, so the numbers weren't far off, just a few ticks.

Today I weighed in at an "off cycle" 167 lbs. I say "off cycle" when I'm at the heavier point of my weight. I was "on cycle" by the time I went for the ride, and after I weighed… I have to go weigh myself.

Ha. Exactly the same weight, down to the tenth. Haha.

Oh and when I set out I'd eaten about 1200 cal. With about 900 cal burned I'm at a net of under 300 cal for the day. Therefore I should be able to eat a bit tonight for dinner.

Compare that to the 175-179 lbs I weighed most of the summer and it's a dramatic difference, a good 10 lbs loss. I felt it immediately heading out of the complex. I have to climb a hill that's a good minute effort at 300-450 watts.

Today I peaked at 529w on that hill and did about 12 mph on the hill. It took me less than a minute and I slowed dramatically at the top just because.

Sept 27th I peaked at under 370 and struggled to go 9 mph. It took me about 1:20 to do the hill.

Aug 3rd I hit just under 390w and struggled to hit 10 mph. It took about 1:15 to do the hill.

There's another little hill I want to check but it's so short and in the middle of the loop so it's harder than checking the first few minutes of a given ride. On a great year, like 2010, I was flowing up the hill in a 53x14 at 25 mph. On tougher years it's hard for me to go 16-18 mph. I'm curious what today was like - I did it twice and both times it felt easier than any recent memory.

I hadn't been out in a while so I had some of the normal twinges from being able to ride in the saddle. They were gone by an hour into the ride but I was pretty aware of them, just in case they didn't go away.

I also learned, again, just how unaerodynamic it is to stand up. Given the choice I'll stay seated at speed, or stand while on the drops. However today, going along in a stream of traffic (I know, traffic on Christmas?), I stood while on the hoods for a short hill. It was like I hit a wall I slowed so much.

In a field, standing on the hoods is not a big deal.

Alone?

Big deal.

(Specialized did a simple wind tunnel test and it showed that for one rider - sample size was one - there was a significant savings aerodynamically in the draft by being on the drops versus being on the hoods. I thought about that today while I was on the hoods. The rider in question was a relatively tall woman based on the head tube size of the frame. I, of course, am a relatively short-legged guy so when I stand up I catch more wind proportionally speaking, so there's that.)

I did a loop and a half of my normal Quarry Road loop, trying to get my favorite right turn in (10/202 to 315) so I could do a big jump. The first lap I did an half hearted jump, deciding to make the effort only after I was clear of the turn. The effort ended up a 1000w peak, 600w for 10 second kind of effort. Definitely subpar, but fun and invigorating for a late December ride.

I figured I'd do it for real on the next loop.

Unfortunately the light turned red just before I got to the light the second time so I didn't do the second jump. I thought about it but instead decided to save it and see how the final half mile hill went. Ultimately it went about normal, based on Strava's "recent effort" comparison. I went significantly faster once this year, significantly slower twice, and within a 10 second window the other 5 times.

Yes I've only done the Quarry Road loop 9 times this year.

Nine.

It's my normal outside training ride and I used to do it 1-2-3x a week. I guess I haven't felt the need to ride outside much the past few years.

So with that I headed in. I wanted to get one last picture of the bike, in its current iteration, before the deep freeze sets in.

After the ride, Christmas Day.

Photo taken with my LG G2 phone camera in "dynamic mode"

Thoughts on the current iteration of the bike.

The bottle placement accentuates the length of the bike. I kind of like it. With the pump, the taillights, the bag, the bike has a very rear mass bias look and I like it. All the stuff is grouped around the seat tube, leaving the front end of the bike a bit bare and way out in front.

I've been working on the downtube bottle cage - I think I'm going to put in new rivnuts instead of trying to file the current cage, as I want them a good 1 cm further up the tube. Instead of trying to get it done for the ride today I just used the seat tube cage.

For the record I never touched the bottle during the ride.

I combined the two Blackburn mini pumps (one carbon bodied, one regular plastic) into one "best condition" carbon one. That's the pump peeking out from behind the seat tube.

Both blinkie lights have full strength rechargeable batteries.

The saddle bag has all my training ride stuff in it. It's short the third tube so it's a bit baggy looking. With a third tube it looks like something out of a catalog, perfectly formed.

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.

Training - Back Issues

The last couple months I noticed something after my rides - my legs weren't sore. I mean, okay, that's good, right?

Well, yes, and no.

I've noticed in the past 5 or 10 years that it takes me longer to recover from muscle soreness, whether from lifting, riding, or even doing core exercises. I got used to that low grade soreness while walking down the stairs in the morning.

This summer, though, I haven't gotten very sore at all, not enough to notice.

To me part of this meant that I haven't been working hard enough muscularly. If my legs aren't sore then I'm not breaking down the muscle fibers. I understand that it's not always good to be sore, but I'd expect some soreness after harder rides.

So Sunday, when the Missus took Junior out shopping so I could ride, I went out with the express intent of making my legs sore.

I pushed bigger gears, pedaled at lower rpms, and pushed pretty consistently, doing two laps of my Quarry Road Loop. The first lap I stayed mainly on the tops, trying to stay on top of the bigger gears.

There's one little rise, literally a 2-3 pedal stroke "hill", on the loop. It's a little test, insignificant really, but an indicator of where I stood in terms of overall riding goodness.

Sunday I found that I went over it at about 20 mph. In 2010, when I weighed 20 pounds less, I'd regularly roll over it at 24-25 mph. For me this was a concrete example of what weight gain (and loss) does to my riding. I thought to myself that losing weight over the 2014 winter would be a good thing.

I did the second lap mainly on the drops because, frankly, my back was hurting and it felt much better on the drops. I actually rode it pretty well, covering the same loop about 45 seconds faster. The first lap I get a 35 mph running start into the first bit of Quarry Road (because I come off of a descent) so to do the second lap faster was significant. It meant that I pushed the whole time. It also probably meant that I was more aerodynamic in the drops, which makes sense also.

I arrived home pretty spent. My back ached pretty badly - it's really the only thing I noticed when I climbed off the bike. After cooling down and taking a shower I took "inventory" - legs were fine. Back was not, and in fact I couldn't lift Junior very easily.

The Missus noticed that I was favoring my back and tried to cover for me. The fact that I was that bad led me to think about how I haven't done any core work for a year or two. I did core stuff regularly in 2010 and didn't have back issues even with a lot of riding. I stopped, had such back issues in 2013 that I couldn't shovel snow, and in 2014 the Missus got me to buy a snow thrower so that I wouldn't have to shovel.

My thought is that my core strength is so low that it can't support the workload my legs. This is why my legs don't get sore after a race - I can't work them hard enough.

My back, on the other hand, has been bugging me this whole season. Therefore I need to work on my core. This will give me the base necessary to get my legs back into the mix, to work them hard enough to get sore.

The other thing is weight. My bike weight doesn't vary that much between racing and training wheels yet it feels really substantial. To lose six or seven times the difference would be astronomical yet I haven't done it.

When I went out on Sunday's ride I was wondering why my legs didn't get sore after some very hard races. I realized during and after that ride that it went further than that.

So for me the answer is clear.

Work on my core.

Work on losing weight.

See what happens in 2015.

Equipment - Bike Weight (Red Tsunami)

After reading some stuff about bike weights online I got curious about my own bike's weight. For the EVEN Hotel Fun Ride I brought a bunch of bike mechanic stuff to the hotel that I don't normally touch. This included packing the bike tool box (which has my big digital scale in it, meaning the scale for weighing stuff over 1000 grams) as well as the repair stand (which is perfect for holding the previously mentioned scale). After the ride I unloaded the stuff into the garage and it hasn't moved since. My race wheels sit there as well.

I realized that I had everything I needed to weigh my bike in its various iterations.

So I did.

My main focus was to see the delta in the weights for the wheels. I mean, okay, the ultimate weight is nice to see, but I wanted to see if there was any objective data to back up my very subjective opinions and such. I didn't put the SRM PCV (computer head) on the bike, it's about the only thing missing in terms of "always on the bike". The tail lights (I use two), saddle bag full of stuff, and pump, they go on for training rides but not for races. Bottle - since I usually ditch my bottle before the finish I figured keeping it off was fine.

My bike, after the Nutmeg State Games 2014. Stinger 7/9 wheels.

Weight = 16.2 lbs without bottle and SRM head.

The results below:

Red Tsunami bike, no pump, no bottle, no SRM head, no tail lights, no saddle bag with stuff in it. I train on the bike with the Jets right now.

Bike with Jet 6 front and Jet 9 rear wheels: 8.62 kg, 18.98 lbs.

Note that all the HED wheels, except the Stinger 7/9 combo, use the same model hubs and spokes. Even the Stinger 7/9 use very similar weight hubs. Therefore the majority of the weight differences are in the tire/tubes, rims, cassette, and a minor difference due to small variations in spoke count.

On the clinchers I'm using Maxxis ReFuse training tires, Bontrager tubes, and Velox rim strips. On the tubulars I have either Vittoria EVO tires (one of them is a Tech rain tire and the rest are regular CXs) or the Bontrager XXXLite tires. Weights for the tubular tires are virtually identical.

2010 HED Jet aero clinchers (with stock HED front skewer and trainer rear skewer)

Jet 6 front wheel, 1.71 kg / 3.77 lbs
Jet 9 rear wheel, 1.97 kg / 4.33 lbs (with 11-25 steel Campy Centaur? cassette)

2010 HED Bastogne clinchers (with stock HED front skewer and trainer rear skewer)

Bastogne front wheel, 1.16 kg / 2.55 lbs
Bastogne rear wheel, 1.62 kg / 3.57 lbs (with 11-25 steel Miche or BBB cassette)

2011-2012 HED Stinger 7/9 aero tubulars (with stock HED skewers)

Stinger 7 front wheel, 1.10 kg / 2.42 lbs
Stinger 9 rear wheel, 1.31 kg / 2.88 lbs (with 11-23 steel Miche or BBB cassette)

2010 HED Stinger 6 aero tubulars  (with stock HED skewers)

Stinger 6 front wheel, 0.95 kg / 2.09 lbs
Stinger 6 rear wheel, 1.31 kg / 2.88 lbs (with 11-21 ti/steel Campy Record cassette)

Bike weights with clinchers

With Bastognes, 7.72 kg / 17.0 lbs
With Jets, 8.62 kg / 18.98 lbs

Bike weights with tubulars

With the Stinger 7/9 setup weighs 7.35 kg or 16.19 lbs.
With the Stinger 6 wheels weighs 7.20 kg or 15.85 lbs.

Thoughts

The first thing is that I thought my bike was much heavier when set up for training. 19 pounds is not a lot for a bike, and to me the bike feels like a tank with the Jet wheels fitted. If I were to guess I'd have said my bike weighed 20-22 pounds so to have a 19 pound bike is pretty surprising. When I started racing a 19 pound bike was super light, and 20-21 pounds was about normal for a race bike. I've taken spins on 12 pound bikes in parking lots and they feel like they're made from styrofoam, they're so light, and my bike is nowhere near that.

Second I knew the Jets were heavy but to weigh about 8 pounds for the pair of wheels (with tires etc) is pretty substantial. The Jets give away about 1.5 kg or over THREE pounds to my tubulars. The front clincher wheels, which are identically set up in terms of hub/spokes/tire/tube/rimstrip, are about half a kilo apart so that's a full pound or more in just the rim. Let me repeat that in bold. The rims make for a full pound difference! The only difference between the two front wheels is the rim so that's where the weight is, directly in the rim area. This is why the wheels feel so hard to spin up, the rims weigh twice as much. They are more aero but I use so much energy getting them up to speed that I'm pretty much exploded by the time I'm able to substantially use the aero benefits.

Third, I was shocked to see that the Stinger 9 and the Stinger 6 rear wheels weigh the same. The 9 even has a heavier cassette and a marginally heavier tire. To see that it weighed the same means that basically it'll be my standard rear racing wheel. The 6 no longer has a function. It's not lighter, a tall rear wheel is always usable, and I'll have a higher top speed for a given power in a sprint. Since the Stinger 6 rim is cracked I may build it out as another 9.

The final thought is that I figured my bike was heavier in general. To be so close to the UCI minimum weight of 6.8 kg / 15 lbs surprised me. My Cannondale 2.8 was, at best, about 17 pounds with extremely light tubular wheels (280g rims, 28H, hubs similar to modern day hubs). This was on a spring-type scale (a fish scale sold through a bike distributor) so the accuracy was questionable at best, but it was a pretty light bike. The Cannondale SystemSix, with the Reynolds tubular DV46 wheels, came in at about 15.5 pounds, on the same digital scale I used to record all the above weights. The Tsunami only gives away a third of a pound compared to the very sweet System Six. It's virtually the same build kit so it's the wheels, the saddle (my carbon railed SLR is light), the fork (my current ENVE 2.0 is light), and the (probably heavier) Steelman stem and FSA Wing bar that are different.

Going Forward

I suppose I could cut some weight off by swapping cassettes between the Stinger 6 and Stinger 9 - the 11-23 ti/steel cassette is noticeably lighter than the 11-23 steel cassette. However the overall result wouldn't be significant. I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the two, separated by 50 or whatever grams, or 0.05 kg.

I don't have any weight weenie parts per se. Thomson seatpost (the regular one), FSA Wing Compact bar (aluminum), Campy Skeleton brakes (Athena? I bought them used), Crank Bros headset, Specialized Rib Cage bottle cage. I even left two Planet Bike blinky light mounts on, and the bike had the SRM mount (but not the actual computer head).

The light stuff I have on the bike includes the ENVE 2.0 fork, the carbon railed SLR saddle, and… I think that's it. Both are long term items, not wear items. I plan on having them for a long time. I bought some lighter weight tubes (60g vs 90g) but, again, realistically I'm not going to notice that as much as if I move from one wheel set to another. Plus they're thinner and slightly less durable so I'll stick with training on regular tubes for now.

Steelman Bikes stem, it's not light. 257.4 grams unpainted, so 0.57 pounds by itself. I think a typical stem is in the 100-120g range. That's a substantial difference relatively speaking, to double the weight of a part. However fit is absolutely critical so I can't nitpick the weight of the stem.

Tsunami frame, alone, is about 1300g with paint, binder clamp, and barrel adjusters. Unpainted it was 1210g. My frame and fork should weight in the 1650g range (with a 350-ish gram fork). The Cannondale was supposed to be 1150g for the 56 cm so a bit less for the 52 cm I rode. Again fit is first so a little bit of weight is a normal sacrifice for a custom fit, sub-$800 frame.

I do have a light crankset, the Cannondale SI SRM, which is about 675g total, with bottom bracket. I think I've weighed it but I don't know if I ever put the pictures up, and looking through about 20k pictures doesn't appeal to me right now. A typical crankset (Campy Record aluminum with Record BB) will weight 900g or more.

However, for basically no carbon except the rims and the saddle rails, the bike isn't heavy at all.

Realistically it would be easy to drop a little weight in the training wheels, but that's not my goal. In fact I want to keep the bike heavy for training.

For racing I might be able to shed a few grams here and there. However, with my own body weight something like 9000 g / 20 pounds higher than in 2010, spending money to save 40 or 50 grams seems ludicrous. Therefore I'm not going to do anything to the bike.

Equipment - Search For Titanio Replacement

"Titanio" is a misnomer, really - it basically means "titanium". But San Marco called a particular saddle the Titanio and it's a favorite of mine. I tried the Arione for a bit as it came on my Cannondale. I also tried, briefly, an SLR.

The problem with the Titanio is that I don't remember seeing it produced after about the year 2000. Some places had it in stock for another couple years. I didn't realize San Marco stopped production so I panicked and went looking for spare saddles. When I got my last new one I cleaned out one distributor's stock, all one of them.

A friend of mine remembered I used the saddles so he gave me three that he had. Apparently they no longer worked for him. I'm pretty sure one broke almost immediately; the other two were relegated to spare use and, eventually, to the track bike and the tandem. I could tell the saddles he gave me because he wore the sides out - being as he's more of a cyclist's build than me (aka he's not as heavy) I can only theorize that training a lot wears out the sides of these saddles.

Along with one desperate purchase, a plastic railed (not carbon, it's plastic, like regular plastic) version, I had two titanium saddles and the one plastic one.

Since then I've bought one used and a friend bought one used for me. The latter was sort of funny. Said friend emailed me to let me know that there was a Titanio up for grabs on eBay. I looked, it was reasonable, it was $35, and I thought, well, I should probably get it. A few hours later I decided that, yes, I'll get it. I went to my Watchlist and, yep, it was gone.

I emailed my friend.

"Dude, someone bought the saddle. I'm totally bummed."
"I bought the saddle because I didn't want you to miss out on it."
"Oh. Haha. Okay."
"I'll ship it to you."
"Okay, thanks."

I broke one of my precious saddles, leaving me with a total of three titanium and one plastic railed Titanio. When I built up my red Tsunami 1.1 I had the plastic one on the black bike, a ti railed one on the track bike, a ti rail one on the tandem, and I installed another ti railed one on the red bike.

I had just one spare.

I started to worry. I could steal the saddle off the tandem, fine, that bike is almost like a spare parts holder with its new shifters and ti railed Titanio. Okay, so it has two spares on it.

But after that... I didn't have much in the way of options. My sporadic checks on eBay didn't turn up much. Plus I wanted to find a current saddle that would work. This way I could build up stock, just like I did with the Titanio saddles.

The other thing weighing on my mind was the weight. The Titanios were about 220 grams, which isn't bad but it isn't great. I am conscious of a part's weight but I don't go out and get the lightest stuff on purpose. If it's light and it works I'll get it.

As an example my Cannondale SI SRM cranks are power meter cranks, fine. But they're also just 675 grams for the cranks, rings, and bottom bracket. In comparison the Campy cranks I had before were closer to 1000 grams, about 300 grams or 2/3 of a pound heavier. They didn't measure power, they were more flexible, and they required a proprietary fifth chainring bolt.

My SRM cranks are lighter, stiffer, and they measure power, and, based on everything that it came with (because it came as a bike I got a Cannondale SystemSix frameset, Campy Record build kit, Arione saddle... I sold off the wheels and bars and gave away the stem), they were relatively inexpensive.

When I buy these kinds of non-wear items, like cranks, saddles, pedals, bars, stems, seatposts, etc, I want to optimize the weight factor. I won't buy stupid light stuff, nor will I spend $300 on a post to save 20 grams. I will take a slightly heavier-than-lightest part that is durable and works well.

The new FSA Compact bar I want to adopt falls under those requirements. They cost little, about $50 at the local shop, they weigh within 30-50 grams of the lighter carbon bars (especially since I cut 30 grams worth of excess bar off, bringing them close to 200g actual weight), they're durable, and they work as long as I have a longer stem. I think anyway.

The Titanio saddles are durable, work well, but they're not optimal in terms of weight. If I could find a newer lighter saddle that worked as well I'd be in business.

I remembered the SLR saddle. I couldn't remember what I didn't like about them. I knew that the Ariones were a bit wide in the middle and flat fore and aft. I started looking at saddle profiles. I figured if anyone would have a similar saddle to the Titanio it would be the folks that made the Titanio, San Marco.

Someone somewhere mentioned that we don't sit on our sit bones, we sit on the inside edges of our pelvic cradles. I think the actual bone is the ramus of ischium. That makes sense to me because when I consciously sit on my sit bones I'm totally upright, an unnatural position for me on the bike. When I'm sitting "normal" my pelvis is tilted forward.  Until I read that comment on where we sit I couldn't visualize where it is that we sat, I just knew that the sides of the saddle sort of supported my pelvis.

With the idea of the ramus of ischium in my head I realized that it's not the tail of the saddle that counts - that's where I'd be sitting upright. It's the curve in the middle 2/3 of the saddle, how it flares outward.

The Arione was too wide there, hence it felt wide.

The Titanio is a bit more triangular.

I needed another "more triangular" saddle.

Selle Italia makes the SLR, a minimalist lightweight saddle. I had one before. I either sold it or gave it away but I'm not sure why. I decided that I'd give the SLR a shot again.

And then I checked the prices of the SLRs out there.

They were a bit much. I mean, okay, $100 is about the market price for a somewhat minimum saddle. But $300 for a saddle is a bit much for me.

I checked Slowtwitch and sure enough someone was selling a high end SLR for $125. I snapped it up. A few days later it showed up at the house.

Carbon rails and all that.

Note the flared shape. This is similar to the Titanio. Many new saddles are much narrower in the middle, flaring aggressively at the tail. I was looking for something less aggressively flared, like this thing.

Titanio saddle profile from above.

I didn't want a cut out either - I don't feel the need for one so I'm skipping that for now.

Weight of my (hopefully) new standard saddle.

The one I took off the bike.

You can see the wear starting on the side of the nose.

The weight difference is about 75 grams or a bit more than a tenth of a pound. Every 45 grams is a tenth of a pound (454 grams is a pound).

Of course I'm 7 pounds heavier than I was in late January after I did 33 hours of riding. After February, when I did 8 hours, I was 10 pounds heavier. A tenth of a pound is... an incremental gain at best. It will only count if I'm 15-20 lbs lighter than I am now, when each pound becomes more important, more significant. For now just makes the bike easier to put on the roof rack.

My spare. Odd, it's heavier.

When I checked the production dates on the saddles my original one was made in 1991 (based on the "91" stamped on the underside of the saddle). The newer/heavy one was made in 1999.

The important part is how the SLR worked. I went for a ride on Thursday with the saddle after I installed it. I had to raise the post a full centimeter as the saddle sat much lower.

The shape worked for me. I was in shorts so that meant thin material. I slid around on the saddle a bit more than normal - I don't know if there's some upholstery Son-of-a-Gun type stuff on it but I hope it gets a bit more tacky. I need to move the saddle up and forward a touch - I found myself sitting further back trying to get proper leg extension so the saddle is a bit low right now.

Currently my bikes are at 66 cm BB->Saddle (black bike with 175 mm cranks) and 66.5 cm BB->Saddle (red bike with 170 mm cranks). I think my normal height was 67 cm so I think I'm 0.5 cm too low. This would explain me pushing all the way back on the saddle trying to get enough leg extension.

I took the opportunity to install the ti bolts I accidentally bought for the Thomson post.

Speaking of incremental gains these are really incremental, almost microscopic...

The regular bolts.

The accidental ones, less than 10 grams lighter.

It was kind of a dumb purchase. I bought everything in my cart thinking I'd deleted these and I didn't realize I bought them until the package showed up. If they last then that's great. If they don't... well then I was dumb to buy them.

Let's put it this way - I didn't buy more of them.

I'll see how the SLR works for the next couple months. If you start seeing more SLRs on my bikes you'll know that they're working out.