Summary | Biking To Live

Biking to Live Week 5 Summary

Posted by Bryan on May 25, 2008 in Blog, Uncategorized | 7 comments

This was a good week of riding. I managed to get all three of my weekday rides in as well as a longer Saturday ride. The shift to my Cannondale R-300 has dramatically helped me improve my speed.

Here are the totals for this week:

Monday: 11.52 miles, 52:26, 16.1 mph max, and 13.1 mph avg
Wednesday: 11.51 miles, 53:35, 18.2 mph max, and 12.8 mph avg (first ride on the Cannondale)
Friday: 12.17 miles, 47:05, 18.7 mph max, and 15.5 mph avg
Saturday: 25.14 miles, 1 hr 36 min, 20.8 mph max, 15.6 mph avg

Even though Wednesday way my first ride on The Crotch Rocket my average speed was still about the same due to taking it easy. I was riding with my brother-in-law who was riding a hybrid and if I hadn’t taken it slow I would have dropped him pretty quick. On Friday and Saturday though you can see a substantial increase in the average speed.

I also passed 200 miles this week since starting Biking To Live and this weeks mileage puts me at 241 miles total.

I can’t tell you how much better I feel since embarking on this journey. Not only is my biking improving but my health is too. My weight loss has been minimal (less than 5 pounds) but improvements in my blood pressure and heart rate has been dramatic. I had another doctor’s visit this week to follow up on some blood work and my resting heart rate had dropped 3 beats and my blood pressure is normal for the first time in a long time. The doc called my blood pressure perfect. I’m still taking meds for it but by the time I lose all this weight I hope to be able to come off of them. Time will tell.

As I said, my weight hasn’t changed much at all but I am seeing drastic changes in the fit of my clothes. I believe I’m burning the fat off but am replacing it with muscle with riding I’m doing. I talked with the doctor about this and he seemed to agree with me. He also said that losing 5 pounds in a month isn’t bad at all because you should be taking it off slowly (approx 1-1.5 pounds per week). If I follow the 1 pounds per week thumbrule then I’m right on track. He told me that as long as my clothes are getting bigger then I’m doing it right. He just cautioned me to watch my diet (which I am) and to start taking a multi-vitamin (which I will).

Pete over at Cycle Pig has started a new weekly series called The Weekly Oink where he summarizes some of the great content he’s found throughout the week. This week, one of the links he’s shared was a video documenting the construction of a bicycle helmet. Very fascinating. You should check it out.

Biking to Live Week 4 Summary

Posted by Bryan on May 18, 2008 in Blog, Uncategorized | 9 comments

This past week was pretty slow and wrought with ups and downs. I only got two days of riding in (mainly due to winds) so my mileage suffered pretty bad. Total mileage for the week was only 22 miles but they were 22 very good miles. I rode very good those two days and was happy with them. My happiness peaked on Saturday when I weighed myself and discovered I had lost some more weight and was finally in the 260s. That didn’t last long though, as I broke my own rule and weighed myself on Sunday. I had gained four pounds. Man, that sucked. To make matters worse, I have felt down all day. I feel like I had ridden a 100 miles in the morning and had bonked about 10 miles into it. I’m dragging big time. After church today I laid down for a short nap and that didn’t help. It’s 8:00 PM right now and I didn’t even feel like making this post but I needed to get it done.

I’ve been Biking to Live for a month now and my progress has been good in some areas and average in others. As far as riding it’s been good. My rides have been getting better with speeds increasing and me being able to push it a little more each time. My ultimate goal of weight loss has been average though. I’ve lost a little weight and that’s good. I have a bad habit of the weight just melting away which isn’t how it works. It needs to come off slowly and that’s how it’s working so far. Like I said in a previous post, though, I’ve seen significant changes in the fit of my clothes. I put on a suit coat this morning that fit better than it has in about a year. Shirts are fitting better as well as pants. I had no expectations that I was going to transform overnight though. I just need to keep my nose to the grindstone and the rubber on the road.

While looking around the net this week I found these great articles:

Bike Noob – Shoes: Worth the big bux?

Cycle Pig – Trophies of the Cycle Tourist

KC Bike Commuting – KC Bike Week 2008 Day 5: The Wrap Up

Watch Dave Lose It – One Way Is Better Than No Way

Now that I’ve got this summary post done I’m glad I did it. I want to say thanks to those that have been visiting Biking to Live. Thanks for your encouragement.

Be safe.

Biking to Live Week 3 Summary

Posted by Bryan on May 11, 2008 in Blog, Uncategorized | 11 comments

It’s hard to believe that 3 weeks have come and gone since I started Biking To Live. It’s just flown by.

The rides this week went pretty good with me feeling great for Rides 9 and 10 and Ride 11 and 12 being hampered by winds. The total ride time for the week topped out at 3:23:21 and mileage ended up as 45.72 miles. I’m not too happy with the 45 miles but the wind on Saturday made me cut the ride short. The wind today was even worse with gusts up to 30 mph. I’ll get up in the morning but if the wind is still blowing like this I won’t be riding in the morning.

One other thing that disappointed me this week was my weight. It stayed constant from last week at 273 even after tracking my caloric intake (which is much less), watching what I eat (which is much better), and riding better (for the most part) this week. Now, even though I didn’t lose weight I have noticed a significant change in the fit of my clothes. I know that sounds weird but I can only call it the way I see it. Because of my increased mileage (and perhaps increased fitness) I may have added a little muscle this week which would explain the steady weight. We’ll see how the weight goes next week. It’s important for me, personally, to not let my weight bother me. I’m a historic scale watcher and get discouraged easily when the weight doesn’t come off. I made a commitment early on to only weigh myself once a week to try and keep from watching the scale, getting discouraged by fluctuations in my weight, and giving up. I’m not giving up this time.

I had a six-month checkup with my doctor this week to have my blood pressure checked and it went excellent.

Here are some other blog articles I came across this week that you may find useful:

ThePig over at Cycle Pig wrapped up a four-part series on repairing flats. You should check them out. Here they are:
Arlyn Asch over at Adventures on a Bike details a 102 mile ride with over 8000 feet of climbing that he recently completed in a post called No Time for Pie.

I’m a huge fan of the big stage rides over in Europe and for those that don’t know it the Giro de Italia started yesterday with Slipstream-Chipotle winning the Team Time Trial. Christian Vande Velde was the first to cross the line on the team so that places an American in the pink jersey for the first time since Andy Hampsten won the Giro back in 1988. I leave you this week with this parting shot of Slipstream-Chipotle in the road during the time trial.

photo credit: TimothyJ

Biking to Live Week 2 Summary

Posted by Bryan on May 4, 2008 in Blog, Uncategorized | 2 comments

And so ends week 2 of Biking to Live. It was a great week. I got four rides in and two of them were with somebody else. I rode distances I haven’t ridden in over 15 years and rode new trails. It was a really good week. Here’s a recap of the rides this week.

The total mileage for this week is 61.38 miles which is an increase of 13.01 miles over last week. Almost half of those miles came from Ride 8 on Saturday. I’m very happy with those numbers at this stage of my riding.

Other great blogging articles I’ve seen this week:

Next weeks goals:

Increase my weekday morning ride up to 11 miles per ride.
Start tracking my food intake. I plan on using a free online tracker at Fit Day.

That concludes this week. Like I said, it was a great week and I feel like I’m making progress.

Biking To Live Week 1 Summary

Posted by Bryan on Apr 27, 2008 in Blog, Uncategorized | 6 comments

With Sunday, Apr 27, upon us the first week of Biking To Live is in the history books. Overall it’s been a great week. I did four rides this week:

Here’s the numbers breakdown for each of these rides:

Ride 1: 10.83 miles, 53 minutes, 12.26 mph average speed
Ride 2: 10.2 miles, 48 minutes, 12.75 mph average speed
Ride 3: 9.86 miles ,47 minutes, 12.4 mph average speed
Ride 4: 17.48 miles, 1 hr 19 minutes, 13.2 mph average speed
Total For Week: 48.37 miles, 3.78 hrs, 12.65 mph average speed

For my first week back into an exercise program and cycling in a very, very long time I’m more than happy with those numbers. I didn’t push myself overly hard to achieve them and they give me targets to shoot for next week. The rides themselves were very good and they’ve left me feeling better about myself than I did last week. It’s amazing what a little exercise will do for you.

I suffered my first injury, Trouble Down Below, but a switch to another pair of shorts seems to have alleviated the problem.

I discovered some great folks over at Bike Forums. You should check them out if you are new or coming back to cycling after a long layoff. Lots of great information. Another website that’s helped me this week is Bike Noob. It caters to the biking newbie and has some great articles by Ray.

Week 2 Goals

With week 1 in the books I want to try and improve every week. Therefore, I’ll be implementing weekly goals for myself. Looking at week 1′s total stats ( 48.37 miles, 3.78 hrs, 12.65 mph average speed), I believe I want to push my weekly mileage to at least 50 miles total for the week, a total time to at least 4 hrs, and a Saturday ride of at least 20 miles. If I hit 50 miles and 4 hrs exactly that’ll be about a 1% increase over my week 1 numbers. I think that’s doable.