Running With the Foghorn Leghorn

[Patrick]

that tbt pic of @gtluke in the burn out pit....gives round eric a run there - just something to make it "better"

if i say i like it do i still need to click like? I like it enough to say it and click it, but i'd call it 2(like) not like^2, cause that seems excessive....dropped a couple of ya there eh

 

[extremedave]

I am "liking" for content but not so sure about the chipmunk thing...

 

[jmanic]

I am "liking" for content but not so sure about the chipmunk thing...

I'm liking because of that.

 

[Glenn Rides After 4 PM CST]

@Norm cr is like going into wisconson

I got the S..T kicked out of me in Wisconsin.
And CR every week

 

[Mountain Bike Mike]

I can find Union in what you say in regards to the word "should". It's something I battle with my wife about. Have you considered, did you ever try, maybe this will help, etc etc. These are all examples of statements that could replace "should".

These two I struggle with ( I unlike) and my wife is an ace at these poisonous phrases...

"You always"
"You never"

Same here... A couple of added gems;

"You know what works for me?"

"You could" to replace "should"

My father in law is notorious for leading with "im not here to tell you your business, BUT"


@Norm - as i read you pursuits in weigjt loss, i feel inclined to respond with things that work for me to be helpful for you. The topic at hand may also motivate me to start up a subtopic on my thread - "Dr Oz - water timing" or may morph into a sub topic on "coconut oil". I guess that's just how forums work - discussions pop up and mature into several other subtopics and if you hang around and pay attention, we can pull out some very valuable tidbits that can be applied for self improvement. I guess this is me taking to time to relate, justify and explain myself as it pertains to advice.

This forum has given me tons of help by way of wisdom of others and i feel inclined to give back - when i see the opportunity.

What is your take on metabolism in relation to calorie tracking with the interest in weight loss and weight mgmt? Oh wait - should save that for ANT

 

[rlb]

These two I struggle with ( I unlike) and my wife is an ace at these poisonous phrases...

"You always"
"You never"

Its a miracle my wife even sleeps in the same bed as me, I am guilty of this all the time. I'm a details person, and when your other half is not it tends to bring this stuff to the surface. Its one of the things I'm slowly trying to improve about myself.

The beautiful thing about these threads is people exposing the things they'd like to improve about themselves. The "you shoulds" still help, though you need to take them in stride. Reading a bunch of people's experiences exposes you to things you'd never think of on your own and also highlights failures you can then help avoid. IMO as long as advice is coming from the right place its usually helpful.

 

[Norm]

Sunday, May 24, 2015

Yesterday afternoon we went to the municipal fields and Julia, Simon, & I went for a hike while Zac & @Dominique played tennis. We visited the Roman ruins then the grotto. I've been here before but it's always a cool little side trip. Then last night @woody came over and we burned stuff and ate burgers. I had 2 beers, 2 ribs, and 1 cheeseburger. @UtahJoe told me that meant Game Over.

So that was what it was, and I knew I would wake up +something today. I had written this passage in the morning ranting a bit about this bullshit scale but I've decided to edit it out in lieu of the great afternoon we had. There's always tomorrow or the next day to bitch about how fat I seem to be getting despite some app magically telling me I'll look like Johnny Depp in 12 weeks. I also had a comment to @Mountain Bike Mike about his post which I thought was kind of in-line with what I'm thinking. But I'm going to save that and my 2 instances of over-analyzing for another day.

First, my ride today was an easy dawn patrol ride just to get myself up over 10 hours for the week. If we did not have a base-10 numbering system I would have slept in. This is my 4th week in a row with 10 hours.

Facebook tells me that exactly 1 year ago today Julia learned to ride a bike. That's pretty cool. At some point in the morning @Dominique suggests we go to Six Mile and managed to get the kids to agree to it. I figure hell, why not? We throw 4 bikes on the car and the giraffe in the back of the Subaru and head down. Here we are before we set sail:

As an aside, I guess it's time for me to come clean and admit I'm pregnant. WTF, 3 weeks into this and I feel like I'm looking fatter than ever. Anyway, I'll worry about that Tuesday but for now we are lining up and ready to go. The loose plan is to feed these midgets with as much water & bike food as we can to get them from the Canal lot to Middlebush on blue, then head back on white to the parking lot and ride the road back to the cars.

Zac was fine and D dragged Simon on the giraffe so he just had to not fall over, which is did like a champ. Julia did much better than I imagined. She had her moments, and maybe a tear was shed a few times. But we made it to the end and she did not complain after the ride was done. In fact, once we got home (with a side stop for frozen yogurt) she actually wanted to ride her bike around the house more. Zac did as well, and we built some logovers in the back yard to practice on. Simon built the biggest thing he could find and I hopped it and both the boys were amazed I was able to do that. The seeds have been planted today, for sure.

Super day, great success. To spite the scale I'm having a beer because damn it, I've earned it. Here's Julia at the end of the dirt part of the ride. 1 year ago learned to ride a bike. Today first time on dirt. What's in tap a year from now? Hard to say but she's come a long way.

 

[Norm]

Monday, May 25, 2015 - Happy Memorial Day!

Today is a special edition of "the weekend" so we take the dance mix of the last 2 days and extend it a day. This morning I chose to sleep in, because frankly I'm not sleeping enough. Kids all slept in as well, likely due to the monster ride we dumped on them yesterday. They were content to eat breakfast then iPad (verb tense) the morning away. I went out to water the dirt-with-seeds-on-top and could feel the day starting to warm up fast. So it wasn't a bad idea to let the kids detox a bit in the AC before dragging them all over Somerville to watch bike races and do mad picnicing.

While the kids were plating Crossy Road, Minecraft, Clach of Clams, and DomiNations, I decided to clean my road bike. I'm not sure what came over me since the drivetrain did not look like a tar factory. But I gave it a full once over in an attempt to stop the click that has developed on every pedal stroke. I popped the cranks out and re-greased all of that. I also took the chainrings apart because I thought that it might be one of the chainring bolts. But in the end I suspect that it might be as simple as the Quarq magnet sliding slightly to the drivetrain side and clicking my sanity away. It doesn't hurt to clean it, and I think I even managed to get the rear brake to unstick. But we'll see, that thing has a tendency to be a real pain.

Eventually we made it to the Tour of Somerville where we watched poor Lauren D hold a monster lead until the last lap at which point the field decided to work together and catch her with about 10 freaking feet to go. After that was the men's race which was somewhat cookie cutter. There were a few breaks which you knew had no chance to stick and with a lap to go it was lining up for a pack sprint. We left and went to the Pearl's for a picnic which was good fun then the kids started spinning out of control and we had to cut out and head home. Long weekend, time to sleep soon.

As an aside, note the extreme usefulness of the like features above. No comments but 18 likes. BL (Before Like) I would have assumed nobody GAF. Now I know that at least a few of you do. This n=1 experiment has now come to a conclusion.

We will resume our regular edition of obsess about whatever tomorrow.

Late edit with picture:

 

[Patrick]

should be able to press like multiple times.....or maybe hover over it to reveal a menu of a post's likiness. (pat.pend.)

 

[extremedave]

See, wait long enough on any given forum and someone inevitably voices my thoughts for me. Bonus "likes" for daughter/Dad/pride which I can kinda relate to.
Pregnancy must suit as you sound happy.

 

[mattybfat]

I hit the like button and posted that I liked the pic. That is a solid family pix, well almost solid as Simon is well being Simon ... Jason has killed many great family pics too...still it's as good as a Xmas card can get...

 

[tommyjay]

I am a chemical engineer. IN - OUT - CONSUMPTION = ACCUMULATION. That's a basic mass/energy balance. Unfortunately, without employing some decidedly unglamorous techniques popularized by models, I have limited control over the "out" part of that equation. For me, the problem has always been that the pleasure of the "in" is immediate whereas my self-loathing over the "accumulation" comes later. Fucking instant gratification culture. I blame society. </hijack>

 

[Norm]

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Weekends, man they are full-steam ahead often times. Anyway, it is Monday...err, Tuesday now. The family fun is back in the school & work box so it is time for me to get back to whatever it is we were into. I'll kick it off by talking a little about what @Mountain Bike Mike mentioned last week.

I think things are not moving in the right direction fast enough. The first 2 weeks they felt like they were but last week my body started to rebel a bit, and I felt off, bloated, and frankly full of piss & shit if I have to use an expression. The scale wasn't cooperating and despite the fact that some magic app says I was 6800 calories in the hole, it just wasn't right. So I did a little bit of reading and think that I may be under-funding myself a little bit on the calorie front.

To step back for a second, this is basically the same approach I have used for years. Cut calories, count them, hit a number, it works. That is all. This time around it seems like this is not working as well. Yes I know things take time but I don't like that I'm feeling a bit more rundown that usual. So I'm starting to think I need to adjust my calorie intake to be a bit more breakfast/lunch and pre-ride heavy. In the past this has never been an issue, so I didn't think it would be this time.

Perhaps I am getting old or maybe I'm overdoing something or maybe it's both. But I think I need to stop the no-calories-on-bike aspect, dial back the aggressive approach, and just look at this whole thing as a longer term project than I had hoped. I know, it takes a long time to put it on so it takes a long time to take it off. Well actually, not really. I can put it on ultra fast.

Anyway, just here to say that I am shifting gears a hair and trying to work my eating habits a little better. I have always shied away from the "breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper" approach because usually when I eat like a king early it triggers me to eat more and more and more as the day goes on. My best approaches in the past have been "24/7 air brakes" and hope it all works out.

Anyway, that's my Paradigm Shift on the day. And as far as double-analyzation goes, it strikes me that maybe the last time I was ~170 I was actually way under-performing. I do often look back and think that I should have been better at racing than I was. Maybe this is all a long-term experiment to show me how to survive properly the last 56+ years of my life. This assumes I live to be 100.

Ok, enough of that.

Got my ChiaPet, thanks @jmanic. Tried them this morning in the oatmeal and they were good. Was I full longer? Maybe, sure. I think breakfast lasted until 10:15 today which is pretty long. We'll see if they last. I'm open to anything, honestly.

Decided to take the road bike out today for a big ride. I wanted to do 4 hours today, but wasn't sure how I was going to do that. So I started by listening to the Podcast of Dan Carlin (I think?) as recommended by @gtluke. It was part 1 of the 5 part Mongul series. In the end, nobody knows shit about Ghengis Khan. After 1.5 hours I had to take the ear buds out but it was a good listen to that point. Oh by the way, look at how clean this thing is:

I stopped at the Pottersville general store and re-upped some water, answered a work call, then set sail again. Decided to hook up with the HG A- ride to help drag me to 4 hours and found them about 10 minutes into their ride. For whatever reason the power was way too f'ing high on this. I looked down and saw 296 for the lap power and knew this wasn't going to last. Less than an hour into this one, the shit went KABOOM.

Anyone ever play that game? I absolutely loved it.

This was about 3.5 hours in. I limped and I mean LIMPED back to the shop. A hair over 4:15 on the day, 71 miles. Not bad for a Tuesday. But holy shit that one hurt at the end. Gas, gone. And yes, I did eat & drink but I'm just not used to this. Working on it.

Facebook has this X Years Ago Today thing. I really enjoy this as it's like an investment come full term. Today it tells me that 4 years ago today, here are 2 fat guys who used to be less fat. This is the first ever Six Pack. Let's go @mattybfat, let's both get back to the days when we were just portly & lovable as opposed to defensive linemen.

 

[Patrick]

what base are you counting in

kaboom! on atari...absolutely.....

 

[UtahJoe]

Love dans podcasts. Huge fan of his series on wwi.

You did an hour of the A Ride inside of a 4 hour ride on the hottest day of the year? Can't imagine what obscenities my coach would be texting me if I did this But nice effort, it was brutal out there

You are experiencing my January 15th through March 1st every year... Just keep on rolling and remember Dr. Nicks advice to Homer : Instead of making sandwiches with bread, use pop tarts. Instead of chewing gum, chew bacon.

 

[The Kalmyk]

H= n/c

Good to hear you're taking the long range approach Norm!!!! I'm rooting for you.

Was that a Nancy Clark quote I read in there?

 

[jmanic]

Cool on the chia seeds, they work for me.
If they don't work for you, you have a rainy day craft project for the kids. Boom.

With the calorie deficit thing, are you worried at all about setting your system into starvation mode*?
I know someone brought it up in earlier nutrition/diet threads,
but the concern being metabolism kind of shuts down and doesn't burn anything in a conservation mode.





*not to be confused with Stravation mode

 

[stb222]

Facebook has this X Years Ago Today thing. I really enjoy this as it's like an investment come full term. Today it tells me that 4 years ago today, here are 2 fat guys who used to be less fat. This is the first ever Six Pack. Let's go @mattybfat, let's both get back to the days when we were just portly & lovable as opposed to defensive linemen.

@Norm @mattybfat

 

[mattybfat]

@stb222 thats easy i am more nose tackle and @Norm is more inside linebacker. That race pic is when I started my off the wagon adventures. Time to climb back on that miserable wagon before I explode...

 

[soulchild]

That bike is hideous

How do you like the Evolution now that you've had significant time on it? I love this saddle but the leather has worn out in about 18 months on all 3 that I've had. The Evolution has minimal padding and is the same structure as the Composit which has no padding, just wrapped in leather, and both are the same structure as the carbon versions. I may end up going with carbon next just because the leather just doesn't last.