Woah!

It’s been over two weeks since my last entry?  Oops!

Well, not a whole lot has been going on in the cycling world.  It’s been a wee bit warm here, so I haven’t been out.  I also took full advantage of my week of at the lab too.

In the weight loss world, as of this morning I was down to 233.  A little less than 30 pounds lighter than I was just 2 short months ago.  Woo!  My weight loss has also not stopped or even really slowed since my exercise has stopped too, so that’s encouraging for me at least.

Now onto the raw arena.  Unfortunately, 2 days ago I had to come off being raw.  It wasn’t quite my choice.  I completely ran out of money until my next paycheck.  That means that I can’t afford to buy food.  And all my fruits and veggies ran out.  So really the only option I have is to eat all the rice and pasta I have lying around the house.  Once I get paid again though I will jump right back on the raw wagon.  This one paycheck a month thing is killer though.

Well, that’s it for now.  Hopefully it won’t be as long until the next entry.

It’s my blog and I’ll do what I want to

My intention for this blog was to chronicle my progress with cycling and weight loss.  I planned on having only articles related to these two topics.  Well, I think I may have changed my mind.  I figure in order to help explain where I’m coming from, it helps to explain things that are important to me.  So I’ve decided that I will regularly feature content on veganism and raw foodism.  I don’t plan on doing stuff in a preachy way, but just basic things like what I made, how I’m feeling, and food related things.  I hope everyone from BikeForums is ok with this.  I also hope that you VeganFreaks don’t mind a cycling post every once in a while either.  Oh, what the hell am I saying?  Who is going to read this anyways. :p

I don’t have any real stories for now, but check back real soon and I’m sure I’ll have plenty to ramble on about.

Shooting for a proper record; fell a bit short

After yesterday’s accidental record, I figured that I would try to set an actual record today.  The plan was to take no wrong turns and add a pretty easy loop to yesterday’s ride.  I was also going to do the whole Boltinghouse Loop this time instead of breaking off early.

The overall total was going to 33 miles.  I was also pretty sure I would be able to do it, as long as there weren’t any huge surprises in the rest of the Boltinghouse Loop.  Well, there was only one surprise.  And it was huge.  About halfway through the part of the loop I had never been on before, I suddenly came to the foot of the biggest hill I have ever seen in my life.  Actually, it shouldn’t really even been called a hill.  To give you a rough estimate of its steepness, if I were going down it, I would have the brakes squeezed the entire time.  It was only a quarter mile long, but according to my calculations had an average grade of 25-30%.  !!  I believe my exact words as I saw this mini-mountain we’re “… You’ve got to be ****ing kidding me…”  As the road started to shoot up into the sky, I noticed something spraypainted on the road.  It said “Uh Oh!!”  That made me laugh pretty hard.  About a third of the way up, I had to stop.  My legs were going to stop either way, so I decided to dismount first.  I sat down for a good 5 minutes catching my breath and taking a nice cold water shower.  Then I started back up.  I was in my lowest gear (obviously) and since my legs were somewhat refreshed, I tried to get up to speed quickly.  Granted that speed was only about 6 mph.  As I turned the pedals to get up to speed, my front wheel popped off the ground.  Nothing bad happened, it just surprised the hell out of me.  Who knew that I had enough power in my engine to do an accidental wheelie in my lowest gear.  Anyways, I got about 2/3 up and had to stop again.  This hill might kill me, but I certainly wasn’t going out without a fight.  As I coast to a stop, which took about 6 inches, I noticed some more spray paint on the road about 100 feet up.  It said “Puke Zone.”  That sign also made me laugh out loud.  These signs were obviously for cyclists and it made me feel all nice on the inside since I didn’t feel completely alone tackling this beast.  After another 5 minute rest, I got back in the saddle, did a couple more accidental wheelies and finally made it to the top.  I really wish that there was a Polka Dot jersey waiting up there for me since I really did feel like the king of the mountains.

After the Col de Boltinghouse, I was understandably tired.  There was no way that I would be able to finish my original route, so I cut it short and headed home.  All told it was 18 miles, but a difficult 18 miles.  Someone on BikeForums was talking about getting in “good” miles.  These were certainly good miles.  I really feel like I could have put out the same amount of energy on a 50 mile ride.

So what do I do about this route in the future?  My gut tells me to avoid it at all costs, but I’m not quite sure I’ll do that.   I think what I’ll do is avoid it if I’m trying to do a long ride, but if I want a super challenging hill ride, I may find myself on the full Boltinghouse Loop once again.

I accidentally did my longest ride today

The last few days have been pretty fun.  Two days ago I learned that I can pedal and slowly turn no handed.  That made me feel like a kid.  I used to be able to ride no handed, but never pedal at the same time.  I made the little kid in me proud.

Yesterday I did an overhaul of my diet.  For the past couple weeks I’ve been reading stuff about raw veganism.  The main idea is that cooking kills most of the enzymes in food and if you eat things “raw” then you are reaping the maximum benefit from the food.  About a week ago I started having fruit smoothies for breakfast that included just strawberries/blueberries/raspberries and water.  I’d also add a little ground up flax seed since it’s good for you and doesn’t add any taste.  I’ve felt much more energetic this week after having these for breakfast so yesterday I decided to take the plunge.  I went to grocery store and got a cart full from the produce section only.  It came to $28.  Not too bad for a cart full of food.  Now my fridge and freezer are absolutely packed.  This morning I had a green smoothie.  It had about two cups of spinach, two bananas, a tablespoon of flax seed, some ground up goji berries, and a teaspoon of spirulina.  Let me tell you this thing was amazing.  I was told to keep the veggie/fruit ratio to 3/2.  With that rough ratio you really couldn’t even taste the spinach.  I honestly can’t wait to have another one tomorrow.  Tonight’s dinner isn’t completely raw, but it will be nothing that I’ve cooked here.  I’m going to rehydrate some TVP and add paprika, ground cumin, chili powder, garlic, and salt and make tacos!  I’m just going to add a little water the mixture and let it sit for a couple hours.  That’ll let all the spices get soaked up by the TVP.  Then I plan on putting the filling in cabbage leaves.  This meal really is great, you should all try it.

So since I haven’t had any cooked food since yesterday, I consider today my first “raw ride”.  And what a ride it was.  The plan was to go 17 miles starting around 2:30 and then do another 17 starting at 7.  If I do more than 33 miles today, I’ll be above 100 miles for the week, which is pretty impressive since I took Sunday off(except for a 4 mile ride) and Tuesday I only did my commute.  To me, taking a day off on the weekend is a big deal, since that means about 25 miles I’m missing out on for the week.

Well, after my green smoothie at 1, I headed out.  As soon as I left the door, I noticed I forgot my helmet!  So I circled around the neighborhood and got it.  +1 mile.  Then I head out again.  I notice that I don’t have my cell phone with me.  Then I remember I haven’t had it since I got home yesterday.  Must be at the lab.  So I swing by the lab to pick it up. +another 2 miles.  After setting out again, I head towards the new route I had planned.  On the road near Griffy Lake, there’s spraypaint that says “Hill Climb Loop”.  I looked up stuff of mapmyride after I had passed that a few times and learned that a lot of people take what is called the “Boltinghouse Loop”, which follows a road called Boltinghouse Road.  I decided to do a slight modification of this loop today.  I’m prepared for some hills.  Before leaving I had left one water bottle at home, since it was my last thing of Accelerade, and I didn’t feel like I needed it for just a 17 mile ride. (I find it hard to believe that I’m at the point where I can call something “just a 17 mile ride”.  Anyways…)  So I only had one bottle of water.  I didn’t think that would be much of a problem.  And it wouldn’t have been if I had planned my route a little better.  My modification of the Boltinghouse Loop took me on Tunnel Road.  As I came up to Tunnel Road, I forgot which way I was supposed to go.  Oops.  So I take a left.  I’m pedaling along and the road is descending like I expected it to.  But then it goes down REAL fast, which surprised me, but didn’t worry me.  What did worry me was when the road ended in a lake!!  I was at Lake Lemon.  Lake Lemon is very far out of the way.  +another 5.5 miles.  I was pretty annoyed.  I was running low on water and just wanted to be home.  I then find my original route and keep heading home.

Then on the way back, one of the most frustrating things that has ever happened to me while riding occured.  As I was riding along, an older man was bringing in his trash cans and his two dogs were at his side.  As I ride by, the bolt after me.  The catch up, since it’s uphill, and I wasn’t really scared or anything, and there is one dog on each side of me.  Then the one on the right BITES MY LEG!  So I unclip my right foot, and connect with the side of the dog’s head to get it away.  I didn’t do it hard, just enough to get the dog to stop.  Thankfully the dog never broke the skin.  Then (here’s the frustrating part), the owner starts screaming at me because I kicked his dog.  He saw the whole thing, so 1) he knew the dog bit me, and 2) he knew I didn’t kick the dog hard.  In fact, the dog didn’t even make a noise, just stopped chasing me and ran back to his owner.  The other dog followed suit, thankfully.  I didn’t stick around to confront the owner about his dogs.  I figured nothing positive could come out of such a meeting, so I continued down the road.  I was pretty pissed though, and I plan on never taking that road again.

As if that whole ordeal wasn’t enough, about 5 miles down the same road I had just come to the top of a big hill.  Then as I’m pedaling along at a fair pace, I look at the sides of one the houses in front of me and I see a little brown thing come running towards the road.  It was another dog!  This time I didn’t want to deal with it, so I shifted up a couple gears, got out of the saddle, and basically sprinted away.  The dog met me in the road right as I passed, but I was going too fast and the dog couldn’t keep up.  And of course, as I go by, I hear the owner yelling at the dog to stop.  What if there were cars coming?  If this were a busy road, I could have witnessed the death of three dogs today.  Something is certainly wrong with dog owners on that road.  So now I am definitely not taking that road home.

After all that fun, I was almost home; I had about 4 miles to go.  The rest of the ride home was pretty uneventful, although a train cross the road about a  minute after I crossed the tracks, and I thought that was pretty neat.  I like trains.

I walked in the door around 5:45 and promptly sat down to record my ride.  All told, my ride today was just a hair over 26 miles.  A new record!  I still have to do 8 miles to break 100 for the week though.  I’ll probably do that around 8, after dinner and after I’m rested.  Who knows what’s in store for tomorrow!

Back in the saddle

Well, I’ve started back up in earnest again.  For the past three days I’ve done the Griffy Lake loop home from the lab.  I imagine I will be trying to lengthen the route shortly though because I would really like to beat July’s mileage total.  For the first entire month of me riding, I logged 359 miles.  Not too shabby, but I would like to try to push towards 500 this month.  This goal might be a little hard to reach.  If I keep up with my 13 miles a day with the long ride home on weekdays, I will still need to do ~25 miles a day on weekends.  It’s not impossible, since I’ve done back to back 25 mile days, but to keep it up all month might be difficult.  Of course, if I could get my longest ride increased, this goal will become much easier.

So in order for me to really be motivated to meet this goal, I had to get some new equipement. :p  For some reason, IU finds it acceptable to only pay me once a month.  So what I’ve done for the last two months is get paid, buy something I’ve wanted all month, pay bills, and spend nothing else until the end of the month.  Last month I brought home the Trek 7.2FX.  This month I spent a little less, but still got cool stuff.  I got a headlight and taillight, so now I don’t have to make sure I leave the lab before it’s dark;  I ordered a few things from nashbar, panniers, a jersey, and a camelbak.  Panniers will be great for going to campus and running errands.  The rack I have on the bike now is nice, but just slapping a bag on top of it really isn’t working.  The jersey will be great so I can stay cool while I’m riding, and it has pockets in the back, so I can carry small things with me easier.  The camelbak I’m looking the most forward to getting.  As I go on longer and longer rides, my water/Accelerade gets warmer and warmer.  That is pretty frustrating as you get towards the end of your ride, and you really need something to cool you down, and you don’t have anything below 100 degrees.  And the camelbak has storage, so I can carry even more stuff.  I swear, I’ll be able to fit my whole wardrobe on my bike. :p

The final purchase I made was clipless pedals and shoes to go with them.  Let me tell you, these things are pretty cool.  I’ve always had the problem where as I get tired, my feet will slip forward and I’ll end up using the arches of my feet when I’m pedaling.  That’s not exactly optimal.  These things keep your feet right in place.  And they also allow you to pull up on the upstroke.  That brings along new challenges as well.  I’ve only done the long ride home once since I got them, and I was exhausted when I got home.  The strange part was that a different part of my legs were tired.  Now I’m really going to have sexy thighs.

So other than the new purchases, there’s not a whole lot of new things going on in my cycling world.  I seem to have stagnated on the weight loss too.  I’ve weighed 244 for the past five days.  That in itself is pretty amazing because usually my weight goes all over the place from day to day.  It’s still an achievement though, because about a month before I started getting into riding, I weighed 265.  21 pounds isn’t too shabby, but I think I’m going to like it a lot more when its ~60 pounds of weight loss.

It’s been a while…

I noticed that it’s been a little bit since I posted. The main reason for that is that I pretty much took the week off last week. After Sunday, I only did commutes. It wasn’t the original plan, but things got a little hectic at the lab and next thing I know it’s Saturday. I took Saturday off too since it felt like I hadn’t had a day to do absolutely nothing in a very long time.

This Sunday, I hopped back on the bike. I wasn’t planning on going far. I just wanted to get my 3 miles TT in for Jumbo’s challenge. I’m pretty proud of how well I’m doing in his challenge so far. I started at the beginning of July at 255 pounds and now I’m down to 244. My TT last month was 11:30, and this month it was 10:24. And that was after taking the whole week off and the first I thing was beat myself into submission.

Today finally got me back in the swing of things as far as regular cycling went. I commuted to the lab as usual, then left around 7:30 and did my ~11 mile loop home. I did it in 51 minutes too today, which means that my average speed is going up. Instead of working on distance riding, which I had been trying to do pretty much since I started, I’m going to work on shorter, faster rides and see where I can get. I’d love it if I started thinking of 15 mph as a slow pace.

As a final note for today, I finally surpassed the 20,000 mark for calories burned this month.  I think that’s pretty cool.

Now That’s What I Call a Weekend!

As I wrote already, my main ride yesterday was 23 miles. I also did a quick 6 mile loop earlier in the day to get a rack put on my bike, and swap out my suspension seat post. The original plan today was to go and meet up with the Nice N’ Easy folks and go on my second group ride. When I woke up this morning though, I was rather sore. I knew that I would be able to finish whatever the route was this time, but I wasn’t going to be able to do it quickly at all, so I didn’t want to slow everyone down, like I did last time.

So after I woke up today, I set a new goal: go further east that I ever have before. I found a route that looked nice on mapmyride.com and it clocked in at 28 miles! After running into two unpaved roads in a row last weekend, I decided to drive the route first, just to make sure. In order to make it all the way around the route, I had to get gas for my car. That is a sign right there that your riding distance has really increased. Anyways, after I got $10 in gas, I started around the route. The first half was one of the most beautiful areas of road that I had ever seen. It just wound back and forth through thick trees and slowly rolling hills. It was great. Then I go to take a right to continue mapping out my route and I’m met with an unpaved road. Crap! I wish that Google Maps (what mapmyride.com is based on) would allow you not to show unpaved roads, so I don’t get all excited about a route. I turned around and started to head back. Then I saw what seemed to be another road that went far in the direction I wanted to go and took it. It turns out that road WAS paved. I had found my route. I went back home, made dinner, and then got ready to go.

I knew this new route was shorter, so I wanted to figure out a good way to extend it. I decided to also go through the lake north of me with the big climb out that I’ve mentioned before. After adding that little section, the total for this new route was 24 miles. Certainly nothing to scoff at. I then headed out the door with a bottle of Accelerade, a bottle of water and a Clif bar. I’ve done the northern lake route about half a dozen times now, so it wasn’t that eventful. The climb out was different though. I didn’t stop! I just slowed way down and kept attacking the steep part of the climb out. This was the first time that I had climbed the entire time out of the lake without stopping at all. Sometimes, I even stop twice, but not this time! Actually, I didn’t stop at all for the entire lake portion of the ride, which was pretty amazing to me. I think that I really found my pace. It felt like I was doing no work at all, and next thing I know, I’ve already covered the 8 miles of the lake part. Then instead of taking a right and coming home, like I normally do, I took a left and headed into uncharted territories (at least with me on two wheels).

I kept trucking along at a nice pace and was really feeling great. I don’t know what it was, but today’s ride didn’t really seem to take anything out of me. Once I started noticing that however, I came up to a nice climb that never seemed to end. It would go up for a while, turn, go up for a while more, turn the other way, and just keep on going. I made it about a mile up the hill and then had to stop and take a breather.

This was my first (and only) stop of the day, and it was at 20 miles. Let me say that again, I had gone 20 miles without even feeling the need to stop at all. Go me! As I’m sitting there, this pickup truck stops right next to me, and this lady asks if I need any help. I tell her that I’m just resting and thank her for stopping to check. My faith in humanity has officially been restored. After resting for about 5 minutes, I get back up and head back on my way. And, of course, the hill leveled off about 100 yards after I started again. Isn’t that the way it always happens?

About 2 miles down the road, I come up on a Jeep parked on the side of the road with its hood up and I ask the two girls standing in front of it if they need any help. They tell me they had just called AAA and were fine and thanked me as I pedaled off. Even though I didn’t do anything, it made me feel good to offer my help to someone, since it always seems that whenever I need it, no one offers their help to me. Except for the nice lady in the truck today.

The rest of the ride home was terribly uneventful. Now that I’m home I feel very energetic, like I did yesterday. Something must have clicked in my body, and now my body LIKES it when I take it on long (for me) rides.

So let’s do a little recap of the weekend.

- I broke my distance record, twice (23 and then 24 miles)
- Today’s ride had my highest average speed for any ride over 5 miles (12.12 mph)
- This week had my highest weekly mileage (107.42 miles)
- This weekend had my highest weekend mileage (52.44 miles)
- I am less tired this weekend than I have been any other weekend since I’ve started riding

All in all, I’m very happy with what happened this weekend.

Take THAT Nice N’ Easy Route!

It’s Saturday and that means that it was time to push my limits as far as distance goes.  I felt like it was time to take on the full Nice N’ Easy route again.  Well, it wasn’t quite the full route, because we took a turn down this side road and went a while and then stopped overlooking the lake, and then turned around and continued on that main road again.  I forgot exactly where that side road was though.  But that part of the ride was fairly flat and easy, so I just added on some extra loops at the end.

So anyways, after watching my TiVo’d version of Stage 13 of the Tour (Vinokourov is my hero, btw) and having a wonderful homemade Thai dinner, I headed out.  Earlier today, I had replaced my suspension seatpost with just a regular one.  After adjusting it to just the right height, I was in Heaven.  Everyone said to swap out the suspension seat post asap, and they were right.  Anyways, I did most of the route as I could remember it, and then I went down a very long steep descent.  And we all know what that means; I had a long steep ascent coming up.  Soon enough, there it was, the hill that had completely destroyed me a short two weeks ago.  As the hill steepened, I switched to lower and lower gears until I was in the lowest possible gear that I could be.  I powered up a little bit of the hill, stopped and rested for about 2 min, and then hopped back on and slowly crawled up the rest.  It is important to note here that I didn’t walk up the hill this time.  I was very proud of myself for this.  When I got to the top, I just kept on going; I didn’t stop for 5 minutes like I did last time either.  About 20 minutes after the climb was behind me, I pulled off the road and rested for about 10 minutes.  I didn’t need to stop, but I made myself stop just because I hadn’t stopped really at all, except real quick to catch my breath.  This was about 15 miles into the ride, and that’s where I usually try to take a break and give my legs a rest.

The rest of the ride after I stopped for the rest was actually really strange.  I was experimenting with how I actually pedal and found a neat way that seemed to take much less energy.  Since I just have platforms, I usually do what I’m assuming everyone else does, I push down on the pedals starting at the top and ending at the bottom.  Not too complicated.  Try this sometime though, if you don’t already do it: when the pedal is coming back up, instead of just leaving your foot there and not really think about it, try to lift it up.  Not enough to make it come off the pedal, but enough so there is very little pressure left on the pedal.  From 15 miles until the end of my ride (and I only stopped because it got dark) at 23 miles, I felt more and more rested as the time went on.  It was really strange.  I’m going to try this technique whenever I ride now and see what kind of results I get.

This ride also officially put me over the 100 mile mark for the week.  It was the first time ever, actually.  I’m pretty excited about that as well.  My next weekly goal is 150 miles, and hopefully I can do that in a couple weeks.

I rode for two hours!! Yippee!!

As I said in my last entry, I’ve been trying to ride longer and longer on the way home from the lab.  Today I brought some Accelerade and a Clif Bar with me to the lab specifically for the ride home.  I’m still not 100% sure if they do anything at all for me, but at least the placebo effect is killer.  I feel like I’m Lance Armstrong after I’ve finished a water bottle of Accelerade.

Since I was in one of my super endurance moods today, I decided to COMBINE two of my long runs home.  I left that lab at 7:15.  First I did the run that I did yesterday that covered part of the Nice N’ Easy route and then I did the run up through the lake north of me that is basically a huge hill down and a huge hill up.  Since I was feeling so good after I was completely out of the lake, I took a right turn that I never take that reconnects with the same road later but looked like it had more hills, at least according to www.mapmyride.com (which everyone should use by the way).  Well, it certainly had more hills.  Actually, the main climb on that road was BIGGER than the one I just did.  Well, I was certainly tuckered after that.  But about 5 minutes later of really pulling back my effort, I had enough energy to go on at my normal pace.  Granted, it’s only 10-11 mph, but it’s still hard to maintain for me, at least with all these hills in Bloomington.

After that little side route, the next stop could have been home.  But no!  I wanted more.  I dipped south, stopped at the local co-op for groceries (not much) that I needed, and continued on.  I was planning on adding 5-6 more miles to my trip.  If I had to guess, at this point I was at 18 miles.  Well, right as I’m about to add that other loop to my route, it got dark FAST (it was about 9:30) and the skies opened up and it started raining.   I had to come home.  I really, really didn’t want to, but I also really, really didn’t want to get cold and wet(ter) from all the rain.  So I headed home.  All told, I went 19.63 miles.  My previous PB was 18.75 miles.  Go me!

Commuting is getting too easy

I live a little over 2.5 miles away from the building I work in at IU. When I first started riding, I was upset that I didn’t live closer just because I would be super tired and sweaty by the time I got to the lab. Now (less than a month later) I really wish that I lived further away. I guess it’s nice because if I need to get to the lab quickly, but if I’m not very motivated that day I can always take the easy way out and just ride directly home. Thankfully, for the last couple of weeks, I haven’t really needed that direct route and have been pushing my ride home to longer and longer distances.

Last night’s ride was one of those long “commutes” home. After all was said and done, I had ridden 11 miles. The route I took was pretty special to me too. I took a fair portion of the route that I was took for the Nice N’ Easy ride. I didn’t go all the way down to the lake, which meant that I didn’t do the gigantic hill that I think spelled the end for me last time, but I did the beginning and the end of the route which was littered with hills. It was nice when I was doing the end of the route again because this time I could actually look around and see what I missed. I must say that it wasn’t as bad as I remember it was before. After the hill up from the lake, it seemed like the entire rest of the ride was giant rolling hills that I would have to crawl up in my lowest gear only to do it again in a couple hundred yards. This time the rolling hills were very manageable and usually fun. They’re kind of like a rollercoaster, and I like rollercoasters. Of course, my change in perspective is probably due to the fact that last time every turn of the pedals was a task. This time I was much more fresh and could actually enjoy it.

I’m thinking that this Saturday I might revisit the whole route and see how it goes. I have a feeling it won’t be nearly as bad this time.