Category: exercise

I’m riding again, sort of…

For the 1 person out there that reads this, you may have noticed that my Cycling Log has some new entries in there in the last couple of months.  I have been doing some riding (and some, little, running) lately.  In May, my brother-in-law and I were talking about running in the Columbus (Half-)Marathon in Oct.  Unfortunately, shortly after we decided to do that, I tweaked my knee in one of my very early runs and was basically unable to do any training for nearly 2 weeks.  As a result, we’ve scrapped the half-marathon idea, but we do plan to ride a century in 2012 (not sure which one yet, part of me wants to do the first day of TOSRV, but part of my wants to do the Hancock Horizontal Hundred, we’ll discuss it when I visit my sister in Oct).  So, since the knee stopped hurting I’ve run a few times (including a couple of 5Ks, the first with Erin, Shane, and Jen, and Sherry and Maggie walking about 2 mi; the second I thought was going to be with Jen, but she and Sherry ended up walking with the dogs and I ended up running it alone).  Given that I hadn’t done a competitive run in well over 25 years (and I was at least 40-50 lbs lighter then), I guess I can’t complain too much about the results.  In the meantime, the legs are feeling a little better the last couple of rides, and the avg. speed is picking up, though not yet back over 15 for a full ride yet.  No, I won’t ride through the winter (at least not outdoors), but it has been kind of nice riding again.  I’ve ridden the Trek three times and the Stealth twice.  I need to get a new saddlebag for the Trek, I’m not sure what ever happened to the one I used to have, but I can’t find it now.  I also need to fix the fairing on the Stealth, I lost a nut during the last Stealth ride.  I’m also seriously considering getting a RoadID, that would be an improvement over the 15-year-old business card I carry with me now.  The new HRM is a Garmin with GPS, so I’m getting accurate maps/distances (including elevation changes that I never had before).  Maybe sometime I’ll post a route map like my flight tracks.  I’ll have to think about that some.  I probably won’t do that for any rides/runs that start from home, but if I do anymore competitive/organized runs/rides, I might do it then.  Here’s a picture (coming in to the finish line) from the Dash for Donations 5K in July.  I look better than I felt 🙂

Update: I’m including links to both of those 5Ks (neither of which were actually 5K).
Dash for Donations
Dog Jog

Why I’ve been quiet, etc.

As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t write much here anymore.  What little I do write I tend to put on twitter or facebook (other than my flight logs which continue to go here).  What I haven’t mentioned is that I also have another blog over at myfitnesspal.com which is strictly devoted to my exercising/weight loss efforts.  I joined the local gym on my last birthday with the intent of getting stronger/healthier (and by getting stronger boost my metabolism to dispose of some excess tonnage).  I may eventually link that here, but haven’t done so yet.  On my last birthday, I was up to a higher weight than I’ve seen in about 2 years.  Since that time I have gotten stronger (though not at the pace I had hoped for) and lost some weight (also, not quite at the rate I had hoped for), but I’m not where I expected to be.  Part of it is due to timing and injury (the trip to Scotland was great, but did through a bit of a monkey wrench in the workout plans).  I also made plans to compete in the Columbus half-marathon in Oct, however, very shortly into beginning training for that I had the aforementioned injury (knee) that has thrown those plans into doubt (I will post on that here soon though)  That being said, I expect to consolidate some of that stuff back here (and/or double post) on this blog in coming weeks, so if there is anyone other than bots from search engines reading this, I really will be updating soon (as soon ans I feel I can take the time from my SANSFIRE talk prep).

Working out

When I said yesteray, I planned on posting more, I didn’t really mean I’d do it daily, but I wanted to get this written down.  I mentioned a couple of months ago, I’ve lost a fair amount of weight in the last year.  I’ve sort of stagnated here the last 3+ months.  First of all, we got a new scale because Sherry said she thought the old one was reading too light.  She weighed herself here and then at the Dr’s office and the difference was more than could be accounted for by additional clothing.  So, I bought a new one and sure enough the old one was reading about 3-4 lbs lighter than the new one.  So, when I hit that 195, it was probably actually a 198 (I’ve actually hit 196.8 on the new scale, so I’ve been even lower than what the old reading of 195 would have meant) and the 232 when I started (this time) was likely more like 235.  Anyway, since early May I’ve been sitting at 200±2 lbs.  There isn’t really a problem with that, I actually am feeling pretty good at this weight, I’m wearing jeans that are 4″ smaller in the waist than I was a year ago (and I’m noticing that they are actually a little on the loose side).  Also, hopefully tomorrow the jeweler will call and I’ll get my wedding ring back (it is being resized smaller).  Several times this summer, I’ve nearly lost it in the pool and when I nearly lost it in the shower last week, that was the final straw, I took it to the jeweler 5 days ago.  Now, I lost the first 15-20 lbs strictly by watching what I ate, cutting the caloric intake to 1500-1800 calories a day, but then I plateaued for a while.  In Jan-Feb, I started adding in some resistance/weight training (starting with the resistance bands 3 times per week and later switching to the actual free weights occasionally for some variation) and more weight came off, another 15-20 bringing me to a total of about 35 where I am now.  For the last two months, however, I’ve gotten out of the workout habit.  It started around the time of SANSFIRE (maybe just before) and with all of my travels in July, it kept on.  I worked out once while I was at my parent’s place and was very, very sore the day I had lunch with the college friend (I hope she didn’t notice I was moving like an 80-year-old).  Then not again until Monday.  I finally put the old DVD in and went at it.  Obviously, I had to lighten the weight (or reduce reps) from where I was when I was doing it regularly and I was a little sore yesterday and this morning, but I hit it again today and I expect I’ll feel better tomorrow.  Perhaps a little more will come off if I get back in the routine.