Back in February some friends of ours signed up for a multi-day bike ride in Virginia. My wife and I were interested, but she kept harping on the idea of riding on the Blue Ridge Parkway, and this trip doesn't go on the Blue Ridge Parkway. I mentioned this to my office mate at work. He's also a biker and he told me that he was looking into doing the Blue Ridge Bliss ride that Adventure Cycling runs. I went home we looked it up, saw that it averaged about 50 miles a day (Which come June will be nothing.) so we signed up. Then my office mate and another guy from work signed up. I worked on Eric a bit, but he didn't go for it; worried about being in shape. But it sounds like he will be in pretty good shape by then anyway!
After signing up we looked at the small print. What we hadn't spotted before plunking down our deposit was that there was a significant amount of climbing involved in this ride. Three days of ~6000 feet. For us, a really hilly day would be about 4500 feet of climbing. We recognized that to survive the climbing we would have to do some training, and even more important, we would have to get light.
Eric can attest that I am no longer the tall skinny guy I used to be. In February I was tipping the scales at a decidedly porky 210 lbs. It was time for a diet. Fortunately the dieting has not been particularly painful. What with all the crap I'd been eating I was probably consuming about 3000 calories a day. I cut that down to under 2500 and weight started coming off.
I'm now down to 195 lbs. I have no particular end state in mind. The 2500 calorie level is fairly comfortable. I've mostly just cut out wine and snack kinds of foods.
We are in fairly good cardiovascular shape. We go the the gym four or five times a week for spinning or aerobics. Once the weather warmed up enough to bike we were able to jump right in and do 30 mile rides. On two days in March we did 50 mile rides. Not fast mind you, but I'm happy with 50 mile rides just turning the cranks. Our training goal is to be ready for the Charles River Wheelmen Spring Century in mid May.
Speedo
2 comments:
Good job Chris on the riding and weight loss. Make sure to work the hills ("Okay you guys. Work the hills." so that you are ready for all that bliss.
BTW, Chris didn't mention that I am encouraging him to take a bunch of time off of work and go for a long ride across the country with me.
Chris's advice on cycling has been very helpful to me and he is a big reason why I am riding.
Yes, great job on the weight loss, and increased mileage on the bike. This biking stuff is obviously going to gain prominence in the blog sooner than I expected! Anyway, it is great to have more bloggers than just me droning on about my training runs. But in the near future, the annual mile run time trials will start up for your reading entertainment!
Mark
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