Steve has no concept of snack portions. If I want snacks in the house (like pretzels), I literally have to hide them so that he doesn't eat them all.
James Pearl Thinks Blogging is Dead
- Thread starter Norm
- Start date
Steve has no concept of snack portions. If I want snacks in the house (like pretzels), I literally have to hide them so that he doesn't eat them all.
pibbles
Well-Known Member
Congrats on your weight loss, we've never met but ive always assumed you look like a skinny guy with a cheeseburger for a head...Fat guys always save all the shirts they used to wear, hoping that 1 day they'll be able to fit into them again.
As of this morning, I've lost exactly 30 pounds. My calorie tracking app (Lose It) tells me this is the equivalent of 3 watermelons. No matter which way you slice it, that's a lot less watermelon to drag up the hills. Or the steps. I'm not aggressively pushing to lose more weight. But it's slowly creeping down which I'm pretty ok with. I have no idea where I'll stop. As you can see in the other thread, holding serve is the harder part of that equation. I would love to get to 180. Sitting at 192.x the past few days. But whatever, not worried about that. A roadmap for another day.
But that's not why I'm here today. I'm here to say that I now have a whole new wardrobe because I saved all those old shirts. I even have a bunch of shirts I got in the last 2 years that were kind of a bit snug, or more than a bit snug. They all fit me now, which is pretty awesome. This is 4 months to the day I started this, so it's been a pretty big change in my wardrobe. The stuff I was wearing up to June 1 is too big now. It's a good thing.
When I went to Halter's the other day, Jay gave me 2 shirts. I wore 1 of them this week and we were on a call with a newer client (yeah, so no, I don't dress up for client calls) and we had the camera on. I was moving my standing desk up (or down, I forget) and the guy on the Zoom call remarked that I must be a runner. Maybe it's the camera making me look thinner than I am, but I was pretty surprised to hear that. Anyway, I corrected him on the running versus biking thing. But yeah, you know, kind of a nice step.
This has all had a pretty strong positive effect on my riding, and my desire to ride. While it's raining right now, we have some solid plans in the next week+ and I hope to round out the year with some good rides. I hit Sourlands with Kirt on Friday and this was 1 of the better rides I have done in a while. Place is a lot of fun and infinitely better to do with a friend who knows it. Trailforks tells me I had not been there since 2016, when I can tell you I had a miserable time.
Next weekend is our last Vermont trip of the year, and we have 4-5 spots picked out that we haven't ridden in 2022 yet. So it's shaping up to be an awesome long anniversary weekend. I don't post as much about what I have going on. But there's always something happening. Things moving on the JORBA front, work happening at CR, the MTBNJ team is probably as strong as ever, and the NICA season just kicked off today.
Hope to see some of y'all at the CR group ride in a few weeks. Also, this goofy mf'er turned 2 yesterday:
Pretty much nailed it. Except now the cheeseburger head looks larger with the weight loss.
I shall explain the long Zwift rides now.
Those of you who follow me on Strava have probably been wondering why on earth I've been doing these big rides on the trainer, 3 weeks running now. Today I hit 3 hours, the longest one of the run so far. Previous 2 weeks were 2.75 and 2.5 before that. The reason is pretty straightforward. I'm kinda-sorta trying to train for this Rattling Creek race at the start of April.
Mind you, I'm not training to win. I'm training to not die. Big difference. The last time I did this "race" was about 16 years ago and I was in great shape, but I flatted 3 times and took a ride of shame back to the camp. Back then it was the RC50, and I made 28 miles of the 50. These days it's a 50k, which is really just an additional 4 on top of what I did that day.
There are basically 2 problems with the above plan.
I don't know that any of the above matters. If I get myself in great shape for April 2 and don't go, what's the harm? I see none. So whatever happens happens. I'm over 50 now, so who gives a crap. I'm just trying to position myself to be able to do it. If it rolls me into the spring/summer riding season in better shape, so be it.
I'm structuring my week as follows:
So yeah, there's that. I would love to say I'll keep popping in here giving updates, but I can't hold myself to that anymore. So I either will or I won't.
Those of you who follow me on Strava have probably been wondering why on earth I've been doing these big rides on the trainer, 3 weeks running now. Today I hit 3 hours, the longest one of the run so far. Previous 2 weeks were 2.75 and 2.5 before that. The reason is pretty straightforward. I'm kinda-sorta trying to train for this Rattling Creek race at the start of April.
Mind you, I'm not training to win. I'm training to not die. Big difference. The last time I did this "race" was about 16 years ago and I was in great shape, but I flatted 3 times and took a ride of shame back to the camp. Back then it was the RC50, and I made 28 miles of the 50. These days it's a 50k, which is really just an additional 4 on top of what I did that day.
There are basically 2 problems with the above plan.
- The bulk of my training will be inside
- Due to various factors, there is a very good chance this is logistically impractical to do
- Ski season is more or less 12 of the remaining 15 weeks to the race.
I don't know that any of the above matters. If I get myself in great shape for April 2 and don't go, what's the harm? I see none. So whatever happens happens. I'm over 50 now, so who gives a crap. I'm just trying to position myself to be able to do it. If it rolls me into the spring/summer riding season in better shape, so be it.
I'm structuring my week as follows:
- One long ride per week, getting myself up to 4 hours
- (after 4 hours then I will work on harder effort, etc...maybe)
- Maintain that 8-10 hours per week total
- Do 1-2 Zwift races per week. I don't have it in me to do intervals anymore so this will have to do
- Do 1 consistent climb per week (Alpe, usually) using erg mode
- (the above has additional benefit if I make it to Whiteface in 2023)
- Try to ride the MTB once a week at least
- Lift 1-2 times per week
- 3 hour ride today
- 2 Zwift races
- 1 Alpe climb
- MTB at CR this week - maybe Tuesday? We stayed on yellow
- In addition to the above I did a 1.5 hour SST ride
- Lifted once
So yeah, there's that. I would love to say I'll keep popping in here giving updates, but I can't hold myself to that anymore. So I either will or I won't.
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I fully expect updates with graphs. Bar charts and maybe colored circles showing completion of something you intended to do.
I haven't been paying attention to your Strava but if I saw you doing 3 hour rides on Zwift I wouldn't have thought anything of it being out of the ordinary.
I haven't been paying attention to your Strava but if I saw you doing 3 hour rides on Zwift I wouldn't have thought anything of it being out of the ordinary.
Those longer zwift races really check all the boxes. Nice work with the long rides. That's insane!
Fine is fine - but is there a target time? or want to ride with someone?
Since @Norm is training, he has to have a goal.
:insert slay goal gif here:
Reading "The Plan" made me smile.
JDurk
Well-Known Member
Solid plan. Bring it!
The Show So Far
Things are going well. I think now that I'm old, I've figured things out a little better. As we age we get smarter, or maybe things hurt more so it's easier to stay in your lane. Either way, I feel that my routine is pretty solid, and I'm keeping a good pace. Last week I checked all my boxes. This week I'm on pace to check all the boxes with the possible exception of the outdoor mountain bike box. Look outside and you see why that's not likely this week.
@Patrick asked about a goal and I guess my goal is 4 hours. I think this is a very manageable goal, and may be setting the bar too low. That would be 8 mph for an endurance race, which is fair but really means nothing without the context of the terrain & trail composition. I can't really look at the previous year's results and project from that. I'm training to be able to ride at pace for 4 hours.
In time this will equate to the ability to ride 4 hours, burn 2800 calories, and be able to fuel myself for that effort. That's the goal. If I show up on race day and the course is fast and I'm at 10 mph after an hour, then it looks like it'll be a 3+ hour day. I have no knowledge of what the course is like so it is what it is.
After the long ride last week I had 9 days to play with and I tried to outline what the next bunch of days would look like. So far I have accomplished what I set out to do:
Sun - 1 30-ish minute climb in Watopia
Mon - Race
Tue - easy ride + lift day
Wed - 30 mile race
Thu - Alpe climb
The rest of the week looks like this:
Fri - tomorrow is the long ride of the week. I guess it would be a 3:15 ride though I'm not 100% on what I want to do tomorrow
Sat - easy ride + lift then go to my parents for Xmas Eve dinner
Sun - we will be home most of the day just us, no kids. Maybe jump in a race in the afternoon
Mon - More or less a free day to do what I want. Probably just try to burn as many calories as I can. It is possible we ride the MTB if it's not a mess out
Then I rest for a week as we head to Canada for 7 days. This will be a day of driving, 5 days of skiing, then a day of driving. You can call it rest but we'll be out there doing stuff. My main focus for the Canada trip is as follows:
1. Eat like a king
2. Try to sleep well
3. Poop like a king
4. Ski a bunch
That's about it.
Things are going well. I think now that I'm old, I've figured things out a little better. As we age we get smarter, or maybe things hurt more so it's easier to stay in your lane. Either way, I feel that my routine is pretty solid, and I'm keeping a good pace. Last week I checked all my boxes. This week I'm on pace to check all the boxes with the possible exception of the outdoor mountain bike box. Look outside and you see why that's not likely this week.
@Patrick asked about a goal and I guess my goal is 4 hours. I think this is a very manageable goal, and may be setting the bar too low. That would be 8 mph for an endurance race, which is fair but really means nothing without the context of the terrain & trail composition. I can't really look at the previous year's results and project from that. I'm training to be able to ride at pace for 4 hours.
In time this will equate to the ability to ride 4 hours, burn 2800 calories, and be able to fuel myself for that effort. That's the goal. If I show up on race day and the course is fast and I'm at 10 mph after an hour, then it looks like it'll be a 3+ hour day. I have no knowledge of what the course is like so it is what it is.
After the long ride last week I had 9 days to play with and I tried to outline what the next bunch of days would look like. So far I have accomplished what I set out to do:
Sun - 1 30-ish minute climb in Watopia
Mon - Race
Tue - easy ride + lift day
Wed - 30 mile race
Thu - Alpe climb
The rest of the week looks like this:
Fri - tomorrow is the long ride of the week. I guess it would be a 3:15 ride though I'm not 100% on what I want to do tomorrow
Sat - easy ride + lift then go to my parents for Xmas Eve dinner
Sun - we will be home most of the day just us, no kids. Maybe jump in a race in the afternoon
Mon - More or less a free day to do what I want. Probably just try to burn as many calories as I can. It is possible we ride the MTB if it's not a mess out
Then I rest for a week as we head to Canada for 7 days. This will be a day of driving, 5 days of skiing, then a day of driving. You can call it rest but we'll be out there doing stuff. My main focus for the Canada trip is as follows:
1. Eat like a king
2. Try to sleep well
3. Poop like a king
4. Ski a bunch
That's about it.
Oh hey, it's 2023!
I have a few things to post, I guess. None of them matter that much, but I find these longer nights, the cold (ok not that cold) winter days, a better time to both read and write. I've been reading a bunch, writing less so but I do toss stuff up on the travel blog more often these days. I'm doing stuff (traveling) as well as catching up on old posts. I generally don't post them here as they're really just my own historical account of what we did. The Canada trip we just got back from is a great example of something that would be boring for the reader, but will be enjoyable to look back on one day. I hope.
This winter is going to be busy, and I'm keeping on the drive to April 2nd and that race. I'm going to keep training for it, and will resist the urge to put "race" and "training" in quotes. But with the travel, I have to be more realistic in what I can do on the bike. I took 7 days off for Canada, 2 to drive, 4 to ski, and 1 we got rained out. When we came back, I laid out the next block before the next travel plan.
It has 10 days. After the 10 days I will go skiing for MLK weekend then immediately go to MA for a customer go-live. So I have 10 days to work with. I try to make the most of them. The way I do it is by laying out what days I have, and what I want to get done. It looks like this:
10 days
2 long rides
2 races
2 rest/easy days
2 lifts (same day as above)
2 Alpe climbs
2 MTB rides
The MTB rides are the most laughable of the bunch right now. I went to hike CR yellow with Bear this morning and it's wet. I can't imagine what red & blue look like. If that doesn't pan out, I'll fill those days with something else, no big deal. So far, the week has gone like this:
1. Long ride (3 hours)
2. Race
Maybe tomorrow I'll climb the Alpe? We'll see. Point is, I've done this stuff enough to know how I can put things together, how I feel, if I think it's worth it, when to rest, and so on. I also have to be realistic in balancing the family time, work, and all that jazz. I'm still going with this knowing fully well that it may or may not happen, and not taking anything too seriously. That is like the Dread Pirate Roberts saying "Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning." I'll just keep saying that.
I tried to keep a stable point with the weight. This will be my next post, which will be my "A" goals for 2023. One of them is about maintaining my weight. I left for Canada at 191, and we got back Monday night. This morning I was 190.9 which means that 7 days of eating like a king did not go too badly. I was very happy to see that number. I'm unlikely to try to drive for 170 again, ever again, since I don't think I really need to get there nor endure the torture of getting there. But maybe a slow downward slide would not be a bad thing. We'll see.
Anyway, here we are. A new year. Huzzah!
I have a few things to post, I guess. None of them matter that much, but I find these longer nights, the cold (ok not that cold) winter days, a better time to both read and write. I've been reading a bunch, writing less so but I do toss stuff up on the travel blog more often these days. I'm doing stuff (traveling) as well as catching up on old posts. I generally don't post them here as they're really just my own historical account of what we did. The Canada trip we just got back from is a great example of something that would be boring for the reader, but will be enjoyable to look back on one day. I hope.
This winter is going to be busy, and I'm keeping on the drive to April 2nd and that race. I'm going to keep training for it, and will resist the urge to put "race" and "training" in quotes. But with the travel, I have to be more realistic in what I can do on the bike. I took 7 days off for Canada, 2 to drive, 4 to ski, and 1 we got rained out. When we came back, I laid out the next block before the next travel plan.
It has 10 days. After the 10 days I will go skiing for MLK weekend then immediately go to MA for a customer go-live. So I have 10 days to work with. I try to make the most of them. The way I do it is by laying out what days I have, and what I want to get done. It looks like this:
10 days
2 long rides
2 races
2 rest/easy days
2 lifts (same day as above)
2 Alpe climbs
2 MTB rides
The MTB rides are the most laughable of the bunch right now. I went to hike CR yellow with Bear this morning and it's wet. I can't imagine what red & blue look like. If that doesn't pan out, I'll fill those days with something else, no big deal. So far, the week has gone like this:
1. Long ride (3 hours)
2. Race
Maybe tomorrow I'll climb the Alpe? We'll see. Point is, I've done this stuff enough to know how I can put things together, how I feel, if I think it's worth it, when to rest, and so on. I also have to be realistic in balancing the family time, work, and all that jazz. I'm still going with this knowing fully well that it may or may not happen, and not taking anything too seriously. That is like the Dread Pirate Roberts saying "Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning." I'll just keep saying that.
I tried to keep a stable point with the weight. This will be my next post, which will be my "A" goals for 2023. One of them is about maintaining my weight. I left for Canada at 191, and we got back Monday night. This morning I was 190.9 which means that 7 days of eating like a king did not go too badly. I was very happy to see that number. I'm unlikely to try to drive for 170 again, ever again, since I don't think I really need to get there nor endure the torture of getting there. But maybe a slow downward slide would not be a bad thing. We'll see.
Anyway, here we are. A new year. Huzzah!
Today I want to talk a little bit about my goals for 2023.
Like many people, I try to start the new year with something in the form of a goal, or set of goals. For years, most of my goals have been bike-related, and they were never firmly stated. It was more like, "Ride a lot, crush people in races if at all possible." Last year I made a set of formalized goals, and they went to the wayside because they weren't very well laid out. At the end of the year, I had a great 2022 in terms of biking, skiing, travel, and weight loss. But nothing was firmly laid out in any of those respects, really. So I stopped tracking the original goals at some point.
This year I have sort of set myself 3 tiers of goals. You can really split them up into primary & secondary, though the secondary itself has a primary & secondary. So I guess you need to make them secondary & tertiary. And they go like this:
Primary
Right now, I have to admit that all I want to do is ski, every weekend. We got back from Vermont exactly 24 hours ago and I'm ready to go back somewhere this weekend. If only life weren't full of so many responsibilities.
Inside the blue bubble lift at Killington:
Like many people, I try to start the new year with something in the form of a goal, or set of goals. For years, most of my goals have been bike-related, and they were never firmly stated. It was more like, "Ride a lot, crush people in races if at all possible." Last year I made a set of formalized goals, and they went to the wayside because they weren't very well laid out. At the end of the year, I had a great 2022 in terms of biking, skiing, travel, and weight loss. But nothing was firmly laid out in any of those respects, really. So I stopped tracking the original goals at some point.
This year I have sort of set myself 3 tiers of goals. You can really split them up into primary & secondary, though the secondary itself has a primary & secondary. So I guess you need to make them secondary & tertiary. And they go like this:
Primary
- Rattling Creek - even though I will keep saying this is not guaranteed, I want to do some event-race like this in 2023
- Ride 50 different parks on the MTB
- Ride 5 new parks that I have never ridden before
- Total of 400 bike hours - for years this was 500 but I have descoped that number in recent years
- Average 192.7 pounds - I basically want to try to maintain in 2023, 30 pounds lower than my max in 2022
- Stretch 250 times - 5 times a week
- Read 52 books
- Ski 16 times - originally this was 12 but D said this past weekend she wants to try and hit 16, same as last year.
- Lift 65 times - admittedly this is a stretch because lifting in the summer is hard
- See 185 pounds on the scale - I don't want to make 2023 about loss, so much as maintenance. But this is a stretch goal
- Write 104 things - such as this blog, as well as travel blogs
- Thee are 2 additional B goals about doing things & being more social that are social based, to do 200 things that are "not the norm" and to see people 150 times in some sort of social setting.
- Climb the Zwift Alpe in less than 1 hour - super unimportant and also really hard
- Climb Whiteface - I did it once before and @Glenn Rides After 4 PM CST is interested
- Iron Furnace - sort of maybe, though if Rattling Creek drops this will likely move to the pole position
- Do a Century ride - this is more about finding time and a willing partner/partners
- Ride in 12 states - silly, but it keeps thing interesting. I pretty much start this with 8 (NJ, PA, NY, CT, RI, VT, MA, QC) plus NH is a 9th, so it often just means riding in 3 states that are not fairly common.
Right now, I have to admit that all I want to do is ski, every weekend. We got back from Vermont exactly 24 hours ago and I'm ready to go back somewhere this weekend. If only life weren't full of so many responsibilities.
Inside the blue bubble lift at Killington:
iman29
Well-Known Member
I’m in for this if/when you are ready I have done many including at least 2 solo. not sure from this statement if you haven’t done one before or you want to do one but need company. Although if your goals above this are even barely successful then you will be bored riding slow with me.
This is the first weekend I have missed skiing this season since the first weekend of December, so I can appreciate that ski goal. Hoping for a March snow dump here so the spring skiing is decent up north.
Eh hem... Cough cough...
Definitely interested in the Whiteface ride.
In for iron furnace. Registering the day it opens. 2 laps
Probably the century as well
In for iron furnace. Registering the day it opens. 2 laps
Probably the century as well