Well, today kicked off my Century Training Series in which I’ll be blogging daily during my 12-week training plan as I get ready to ride my first century in September. I’m following the basic plan in the June 2009 issue of Bicycling magazine for those interested in following along.

Since it’s Day 1 it means it’s Monday which is sort of anti-climactic since it’s a scheduled rest day. Because it’s a rest day I’ve decided that Monday’s will be the day I update everyone on my progress as far as measurements. And since it’s the first Monday we need to establish a baseline for comparison later. In truth, I probably should have established this baseline several months ago so I could measure my progress to date but hindsight is 20/20. Establishing a baseline now will allow you to see how my body is changing during this 12-week training plan. Without further ado, here are my measurements:

Weight: ? (I meant to weigh yesterday since I don’t have a scale…look for my weight update in 2 weeks)
Neck: 17.5 in
Chest: 46 in
Left Bicep: 14.25 in
Right Bicep: 14.5 in
Waist: 48.5 in
Left Thigh: 28.5 in
Right Thigh: 28.5 in
Left Calf: 19.25 in
Right Calf: 19 in

My waist measurement is disturbing. It was measured around the largest part of my stomach which is a horizontal line around the body that bisects the navel. This is how the military measures your waist size and includes your love handles. Most people don’t wear their pants that high so your pant size is usually smaller than your actual measurement. I couldn’t believe that number when I first took it.

My neck size has been as high as 21 but I know in the last couple of months it’s decreased dramatically based on doing some test buttoning of the top button on my dress shirts. I’m pretty sure I’ve lost at least six inches in my chest as well based on a normal jacket size of 52 and some of my suits are fitting so good now. I have a wool overcoat that I wore last winter (didn’t get much use for it in Florida) that I couldn’t button. I put it on the other day and can now button all three buttons and have plenty of room to spare. A great feeling.

I guess one way to look at it is that those numbers should only get smaller.

Next week I’ll add in accumulated ride time and mileage for this week.

Anyone following my blog or tweets knows that I’ve been talking about this for a while. Back on April 1, 2009 I made a post about It’s time to get serious about cycling (my weight loss). Kind of a dubious day to make a post like that but I wasn’t fooling around. In that post I mentioned that I would register for and ride a century. That century will be the Waco Wild West Century in Waco, Texas on September 26, 2009. Tomorrow is the day I officially start training for it.

I won’t technically be starting from ground zero when it comes to my training for this century. I’ve been riding anywhere from 50-70 miles a week for the past two months but it hasn’t followed any specific plan. It was mainly to get me back in the saddle and accustomed to riding more. On July 4th I hit the 12-week point until my century and the point where I told myself I would start training by following a plan. That plan is the 10-week basic training plan found in the June 2009 issue of Bicycling Magazine on page 70. I know it’s a 10-week plan and I have 12 weeks to go. I’ll repeat weeks 1 and 2 twice so I can get used to the plan and make any adjustments I need before the 10-week point. I’m going to follow it as closely as I can so that anyone else thinking about riding a century, and wants to follow my plan, will know what to expect.

My plan is to make a blog post everyday about the ride for that day and what I ate so you can see the nutritional aspect as well. I’m not a nutritionist so I’ll be experimenting and open to any help/suggestions from the seasoned riders who read this blog. Additionally, I’m going to be very transparent on how this training is impacting my body by providing you weekly measurements such as my weight and circumference of my neck, waist, chest, thighs and so on.

I had some pretty big plans as far as fund raising and contests but they are on hold right now. Because I started this blog to improve my health and prevent myself from suffering from heart disease like my father, I wanted to raise funds for the American Heart Association. Unfortunately, my emails to them have gone unanswered up to this point. Without a fund raising avenue I’ve been wary of soliciting companies for swag to giveaway. Before I get tons of questions about why I don’t just fund raise with Livestrong let me re-iterate that heart disease and the American Heart Association are what’s near and dear to me personally. If something changes in the next 10-12 weeks on this front I’ll keep you posted.

I guess that’s about it. I’m looking forward to the next 12 weeks and what it’s going to bring.

With the heat really ramping up here in Texas I decided late last week that I should start investing in some sleeveless cycling jerseys to maximize the ventilation. The no-sleeve design would also help me get some sun on my pasty looking upper arms. So I set off Saturday to visit some local bike shops to see what I could find.

Richardson Bike Mart was my first stop because I was up near it due to attending a WordPress conference on Saturday. I’m still totally blown away every time I walk into this place and Saturday was no different. They’ve got everything and the store is just huge. I headed over to the clothing section to check out the selection. In no time I found a sleeveless jersey that looked pretty good. It was pretty plain and red/gray in color. I don’t believe there were any designs on it. Just a plain jersey. My memory could be failing me though after the trauma I received from looking at the price tag. They wanted $100 for it. I just shook my head and moved on. Now I remember why I don’t come to this store. I did try on a few helmets since I’ll be needing one and found that I basically need a medium in any style which is good info if I find a good deal online. Alas, I couldn’t resist the temptation to have a look at the new bikes. I kept my sticker shock to a minimum and just casually browsed around looking at all the carbon fiber rigs. I pulled one or two out to see how they felt and was totally blown away by how light they are. Maybe some day.

I’ve still been riding just about everyday as I near the twelve weeks to go point until my first century (July 4th is the 12-week point). Once I hit that twelve week point I’ll be following a training plan but until them I’m just trying to build base mileage, work on the hills and get acclimatized to the heat here in Texas. Tuesday was a day off the bike so I had planned on riding hard yesterday. That I did.

The heat this week has been pretty bad with temps at or near 100F with heat indexes over 100F. Yesterday was no different. Knowing this, I’ve been very conscious to drink water throughout the day and have a bottle of G2 in the afternoon. I’ve also delayed my evening ride by about a half-hour so I’m starting around 6:30 PM and religiously doing a slow six mile warm up. This combination seems to be working for me right now as I’ve had no episodes like last week when I was obliterated after 15 miles. One good thing was that some later afternoon clouds moved in which helped with the heat some yesterday.

After the horrible ride I had on Monday evening I decided to make some changes to what I was doing and with the help and ideas of some of the commenters on that post I made several changes and had a great ride. Here’s what I did:

1. I drank more during the day. I said that I have a bad habit of not drinking enough during the day so I took that to heart and ramped it up. I still don’t think I drank enough but what I did drink helped.
2. I ate a cliff bar as I left work to get some food in my stomach and give it time to digest before getting in the saddle. This means I ate it about an hour and twenty minutes before riding.
3. I delayed my ride a half hour. I did this to try and eliminate some of the heat problem and it seemed to help. A lot. Sure, it was hot for the first 45 minutes or so but it started to get much better as the sun started dropping. I think that was a huge improvement.
4. I didn’t wear a cap under my helmet. I sweat really bad and have big problems with it getting in my eyes. I’ve been wearing a cycling cap under my helmet to solve this problem and that solution works great. With the heat though I don’t think that’s a viable option anymore. I noticed a big difference in air flow in my helmet (I need a new one with more vents) but I did deal with sweat in my eyes. I need to pick up one of those head bands that solves that issue.
5. I did an actual warm up. I road the first six miles at a sloth like 12.3 mph avg because, like Doug said, I believe I was starting out too fast. I believe this helped.

Those are the changes I made for last nights ride and I had a great 23 mile ride. Was the greatness of the ride a result of all of the above? I don’t know. I think they at least contributed to a better ride. Like I said I road the first six miles in warm up at a 12.3 mph avg speed. My overall avg speed for the 23 miles was 14.5 mph. That means I road the final 18 miles at a 16.7 mph avg speed. All in the small ring. I felt it last night and a little this morning. This is the first time in a while that I can actually feel like I had put in a hard workout on the bike and felt it after. Awesome.

Thanks to everyone who provided support and ideas from yesterday’s post. I sincerely appreciate it.