blowed out tire...

(11 months post-op) wellz it's the last month to do it big. i was planing on one year 100 lbs lost but i'm fairly certain that's not going to happen. i'd have to lose almost 20lbs for that to be a reality. but hey, i'll try :)

this week i rode or swam everyday. the weight isn't coming off easily but it is coming off. that said, i decided i like the feeling of improving my rides rather than the feeling of losing weight. my legs felt like steel this week. i got faster EVERYDAY. and i added more hills everyday and was still faster. so i know why i haven't lost as much weight. it's because i'm adding muscle.

swimming helps my body recover and i feel great afterwards. even with my underwater audio headphones/iPod it's still boring :) but how listening to music helps me is that i now get to say "just finish the song" and it gets my mind off of how far i've gone. i absolutely love my garmin with it's ability to count laps. it's off a little but it's close enough for me not to have to count laps.

so yesterday i rode the mad duck coffee ride by myself. i rode from the house to the shop and got there 15 mins late. so thought i'd try to catch up. only figure out 10 miles later there wasn't many people out there. and there was about a 2 mile stretch of resurfaced concrete. you know, the kind that looks like someone to took a meat tenderizer to the concrete. that totally ate up my rear wheel. i made it home ok though. but i was feeling extra squirrely and went to ride the las colinas route with my buddy jon. 14 miles into the ride KABLAM!!! the side wall gave out on the tire itself. oh wellz. after we changed the tube i had to ride VERY SLOWLY to get back to the car. i thanked Jon for screwing up his ride having to ride back with me but, hey, i'd do it for him :)

weight 268.2lbs

-blowed out tire dominator

net zero...

welp, after a week where i swam more and rode less and didn't run at all i lost NO weight. that's ok. mostly because my legs felt like steel this weekend and climbed more than i had this past weekend than i had this month combined. i rode the griffen more and getting into the aero position will need to be worked on. not a lot to report. riding a ton, swimming more and not running.

i stopped running because it hurts the feet A LOT. so i decided that i will do some treadmill walking instead of running to get myself used to the pounding slowly. stay tuned.

weight: 269.8 lbs

-net zero dominator

50 rain soaked miles...

(10 months 3 weeks post op) the biggest things this last week was: i started running, and broke out the griffen tri-bike. although i lost weight the number has been the same all week starting on tuesday morning. hasn't gone up or down since. i might even have to...GASP...count calories!!! i know i will at some point but i'm going to hold off for a while. once i start i won't stop so best to hold off until to i have to do it.

did a two a day on saturday (30 with hills in the morning, 18 on the griffen at night) then i rode 50 miles in the RAIN sunday morning. the rule is "never start a ride in the rain" and i didn't but 2 miles in it started and didn't stop. if there's a thunderstorm i end the ride as soon as possible, but it's just rain it can be refreshing. this was not refreshing, it was a beat down!!! but hey, i made myself do it so that's a good thing.

weight: 269.6 lbs

-rain soaked dominator

weaker but thinner...

(10 months 2 weeks post op) what a week... i rode 74 on 7/4 riding from my house in arlington to my parent's house in fort worth going along the trinity trails. that dang near killed me :) took friday off, then rode 50 on saturday. i planned on riding a slow-er paced group ride, the coffee ride at mad duck on sunday but i got 2 flats and had to call a cab :(. then i decided i was going to do 2 loops on river legacy mtn bike trail that afternoon to make up for it. but that didn't happen. in the middle of the first loop i bonked big time.

that brings me to the overall theme this month: just lose weight!!! i have always known that you can't improve performance and lose weight at the same time. you will always sacrifice one for the other. sure you can make gradual improvements in both at the same time but you're doing yourself a disservice by not concentrating fully on one.

but i really forgot why that was until this weekend. after looking at my garmin data i noticed me burning 4800, 4500 and 3100 calories on my three biggest rides this week. all of them were slow paced because honestly every time i pushed it i got that "no energy here" feeling in my gut. if you've ever been an athlete you know what i'm talking about. why? because i'm not eating enough calories. plain and simple. i'm really concentrating on eating clean so i'm not really getting a lot of calories down. i mean not enough to perform at a high level. i'm just getting enough in to finish my exercise. there will be plenty of time for me to build endurance but i only have a shrinking window to really drop the weight.

so that said...MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!!!

weight: 271.0 lbs

-weaker but thinner dominator

poppin' out the back...

(10 weeks one week post-op) although it may look like i dropped 7 lbs this past week, i'm chalking it up to body weirdness. but hey, it beats the alternative :) those mystery pounds left sometime on wednesday and then it was like a pound a day after that. again, it was just weird because i wasn't dehydrated and i was eating at my normal times at about the same amount. i'll take it.

i went for a group ride yesterday (first in 4 years). it was the mad duck coffee ride. i popped out the back so many times when i hit the hills that i lost count. in fact the final straw was me losing the group somewhere around n. richland hills and me forgetting the route (it had been 4 years LOL) so instead of just waiting for the group at the coffee shop i booked it home. made it home in time enough to watch the end of TDF stage 2. that was about 45 miles. i decided that i need to do more group rides and hit more streets. river legacy is nice during the week but i need to venture out on the weekends to places with more hills, wind, and road conditions.

that afternoon i realized i was only short 30 miles of 700 for the month. so i went out for a "quick" 30 that night. well, THREE hours later, i made it back home. first i got a spongy tire and decided since i was only 10 miles away from home i'd use a cartridge without changing the tube. then 1 mile after that it went completely flat. i think the valve broke because i never saw anything in the tube or the tire to make it deflate that fast. so i change the tube after about 30 mins (long story but the inflater was jacked it normally takes me 5 mins) but i finally made it home with 75 miles in the bank for the day and 700.79 miles for the month!!!

weight 275.8 lbs

-poppin out the back dominator