Fit by 50

Pounds Lost: 7.2 lbs Training:   10/2/21 36.02 miles, 9.1 mph avg speed 10/5/21 11.87 miles, 9.7 mph avg speed Other Activity: 10/1/21 1.51 miles (walking) 10/3/21 1.69 miles (walking) Big Wins: Successful race; packing my lunch for work every day

  As might be expected, part of this journey of mine will be getting to a healthy weight. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't self-conscious about my weight or that I don't care about how I look. But more important than either of those things is the fact that the amount of weight I'm carrying is preventing me from being as healthy as I can be and from meeting my goals in terms of activity. Let's face it--it's a lot easier to ride up that hill without taking with me that additional 30 or 50 or 70 pounds. And I may have thoughts about how much weight I want to lose, but I am not going to pluck an arbitrary number out of the air and make it my hard and fast goal weight. I'm going to slowly work toward getting into the neighborhood I want and see how I feel and where my body works and feels the best. Whenever I have talked about this entire journey, I have had people ask me what kind of diet I'm going to use to lose weight. When I say I'm not planning to die...

Over the weekend, I rode my bike in a race called Barry-Roubaix. In many ways, it wasn't that different from a lot of races I've done. I started out with the best of intentions, getting some training in early on before quickly petering out and then trying to catch up in the last few weeks before the race. It's kind of my MO at this point.  I have never not started or not finished a race due to undertraining. I always find a way to slog through it. And while it takes a certain mental toughness (which I do give myself credit for) to complete a race you're clearly not ready for, it would definitely be better to have appropriately trained and feel prepared. Considering how little I had trained, I was pretty pleased. I did not beat any speed records, but I did meet the goals I set out for myself: To finish in less than four hours To ride all of the hills  (i.e., not have to get off and walk) except The Wall To ride the entire Sager Rd section of the race without getting off...

  In approximately 15 months, I'll turn 50. I won't go on and on about how I feel about turning 50. Turning 40 bothered me a lot and I imagine 50 will be even more upsetting. But that's not what this blog is about. What this blog is about is finally finishing a journey I started while I was in my 20s--the journey to be a fit person. Up until I graduated from high school, I was what you would call a couch potato. Free time was spent reading, and even as a kid I was reading when other kids were playing outdoors. I was always chubby  and I started worrying about my weight while I was still in middle school. Shortly after college I discovered the great outdoors and began to crave outside time. In 1999, when I was 26, I bought my first mountain bike and began a relationship with a sport I would come to love. Over the years, my weight has fluctuated and so has my level of fitness. I didn't just ride. I did some racing too. And although biking was always a mainstay, I added ru...