Trainer Confessions

A Tale of Three Rides

A Bicycle Riding Sandwich

Yesterday was a three ride day, with a ride before dawn, lunchtime, and finally late evening.  Unlike a sandwich where the highlight of the meal is between the two slices of bread, I had a peaceful early ride and an adventurous late day group MTB sandwiching a boring but challenging mid-day trainer workout.

Enjoy the Silence

Part of me feels uneasy with all of the recent summer-like weather.  I know that a record warm day doesn't prove global warming, just as a record snowstorm doesn't disprove it.  However, when I got dressed for yesterday's 5 AM ride wearing just shorts and a light jacket, attire that I'd normally wear on an early AM August ride, I knew something wasn't quite right, and I made a mental note to remind myself to think more about how I can replace more miles in the car with bicycle miles instead.

Despite my uneasiness with the weird weather, there was no denying that it felt great to be out on a bike, especially for a pre-dawn ride.  I'm an early bird, so over the years I've logged quite a few hours of riding in the dark, and most of yesterday's 75 minute ride required the use of a headlight.

Riding in the dark is a great way to introduce a little variety to your rides, transforming your normal rides into routes that look entirely different with just the light from the moon and your headlight.  It tends to also be a more peaceful time to get out, allowing you to hear sounds otherwise masked by traffic.  And believe it or not, I also believe it is a safer time to be out riding.  There are fewer cars out on the road.  When a car does approach you on the road, the driver often gives you far more clearance when passing as there's no oncoming traffic to manage.

Interval Time

The morning's ride was just a calorie burner for me.  Over the last few weeks I think I convinced myself that I temporarily became a crit racer, and I started to eat like one as well.  I need a few more calorie burner rides over the next few weeks to get me back down to my target racing weight.

The lunchtime ride had a much different purpose -- interval time!  I donned my shorts again (this time no jacket) and quickly reconfigured my office and setup my bike.  Hopped on the bike, queued up a few racing Youtube videos (like this one from a recent Bethel race posted by SDC), did a little warm-up, and then cranked out the intervals.  An hour later I hopped back off the bike, reconfigured the office, and it was back to work.

Falling Record

After finishing up a day at work I quickly gathered my gear, woke up the girls and Mrs D from their naps, and then drove out to the nearby trail system at Case Mountain.  I had been there bunch of times over the last six month for hiking with the family, and I never saw more than a couple of cars in the parking lot.  When I arrived yesterday after work, I found myself parking a couple of hundred yards down the road as the weather seemed to have called out all local MTB riders to come and enjoy the day.

Despite the fact that this was now my 3rd ride of the day, I felt pretty good at the start of the ride.  I knew the pace wasn't going to be tough, so it really didn't matter even if I did feel a bit of fatigue. 

Last night's ride was my first group MTB ride with five guys & a gal who clearly were not like me.  I showed up wearing my normal tight fitting team kit, whereas most of the rest of the gang had much more casual clothing -- stuff I couldn't distinguish from clothing I'd wear walking around town.  Another thing that set me apart from the majority of the group was my fitness level.  I won't be offending anyone by calling a few of them "fat and old", as they used the words on a few occasions to explain why they were breathing so hard.  The final thing that set me apart was the fact that they had MTB skills, and I did not!

I logged my first fall within a hundred yards of the parking lot, and during the course of the next two hours (about 75 minutes of riding time), I probably fell or did a quick unplanned dismount at least another ten times.  In fact, the ride leader, Steve, declared that I set the record for most falls only half way through the ride.  I intend to file an official protest to my record though -- the only other guy to fall on the ride was also the only other guy wearing a team kit.  I swear that my record breaking number of falls could only have been achieved if someone was giving me credit for his falls as well.

In any case, despite the scrapes and bruises, I had a great time out in the woods.  There was a lot more talking & joking out on the ride than in a normal group road ride.  I got to see parts of the trail system I had never seen before while out on hiking.  The ride ended about 30 minutes after sunset, so even some of the trails I had done in the past looked a heck of a lot different without the sun.  And, thanks mostly to Steve, I learned a few things along the way that will definitely help me when I try out my first MTB race in less than two weeks.

So that's it for my tale of three rides, and as I type this post, I'm thinking that today will be a tale of no rides.  The body feels a bit banged up from yesterday's MTB ride, and a general feeling of fatigue from more than 3 1/2 hours of riding yesterday -- time to rest!

I'm No Jenny Craig

What's my secret?

I got an unusual number of comments and emails in the days since I blogged on the planned ups and downs associated with my body weight over the last six years or so.  (OK, that sounds more impressive than it should -- I usually get no comments or emails, so it doesn't take much to be considered "unusual").  The questions that I got could mostly be paraphrased as "I need to lose weight too -- how did you do it?".  I emailed the answers back on the subject, but I figured I'd post a follow-up here to help dispel any thoughts that I have a magic pill or secret yet-to-be published fad diet. 

The Anti-diet

Even though I have no regrets that I gave up any aspirations of competing at body building, I do occasionally miss the diet.  While I did more or less stick to a healthy selection during my quest to break the 200 lb barrier (I think I maxed out at 203), I never had to worry about portion control.  At least six times a day I'd gorge, and more often than not the next day I'd feel disappointed because I didn't nudge the scale upwards.  I remember one day while traveling for work, my boss at the time picked me up at the hotel as I was finishing breakfast.  He apologized to me for not letting me know ahead of time that we were headed to a breakfast meeting, but I let him know that the 30 minutes or so we needed to travel was more than enough time for me to get ready for another meal.

In retrospect I feel a little guilty about those days of gorging.  With so many people going hungry, and so much CO2/Methane associated with all of the protein in my diet, I now realize that I was being more than a bit selfish, but as they say, ignorance is bliss, and I definitely enjoyed the days of the voracious appetite.

The No Effort Weight Loss Plan

After I ended the body building phase, I naturally lost a good deal of weight.  Instead of 6+ full-course meals, I scaled back to a more normal 3 square meals + 2 snacks (that can hardly be called a diet though).  Plus, muscle weighs more than an equivalent amount of fat, and I definitely shifted my body fat % in the wrong way.  These two factors alone probably knocked off 20+ lbs from my peak, to roughly the 180 mark, yet still 45 lbs more than I am today.  Some how I felt as though ~180 was a natural body weight for me back then, and I still believe (fear?) that I'll be back there some day, so how have I tricked my body into staying so consistently low now for the past few years?

Fueling the engine

As I started to get back into a more focused exercise plan (through a variety of activities at first, but now almost exclusively through cycling and cycling related activities), I did make some tweaks to my diet, which I still practice to this day.  I almost never go back for second helpings, I don't put sugar in my coffee, and I tend to eat a lot less meat now than in the past.  While those were big changes for me, they probably aren't significant enough such that someone can pick me out at the restaurant as the "dieter". 

I'm still pretty much eating as a normal person does, and I still break down and binge every so often (especially at the holidays).  I guess if I really wanted to compete at the highest levels of the sport, I could start counting the calories and really get lean.  However, to do that would disrupt my family life (need to have special food on hand, need to avoid going out for dinner, etc, etc), so I'm not really inclined to go down that route. 

So, that leaves only one other option in the equation to cut weight -- burn more fuel than I consume.  Over the last four months or so, I've probably average 12 to 15 hrs of exercise per week three out of every four weeks (every 4th week is more of a rest week for me).  I haven't bothered to attempt to calculate how many calories that equates to, but I know it is more than enough to offset the intake as the scale steadily keeps heading in the right direction. 

I've never attended a Jenny Craig meeting or looked into any weight loss programs, but I doubt that any of them recommend insane hours exercising as a means to cut the weight.  However, if you're looking for me for advice, I'm afraid that's the only tip I've got for ya.

Weight Management

Rain-man?

Some people accuse me of being too numbers focused, like Dustin Hoffman in Rain man.  I switched under-grad majors a number of times in college, but ended up with a degree in Mathematics (with a minor in Bio for reasons still unclear to me).  I am considered somewhat of an MS excel geek at work with my focus on tables and charts.  I also sprint upstairs after getting home from a bike race to download the numbers off of my Powertap.  So, I'm standing on thin ice whenever I try to cast off the rain man moniker.  

The goal behind the numbers

I admit it -- I'm a numbers man, but I am not in love with numbers.  I spend a good chunk of time recording and reviewing numbers because of how I've mapped them to something that is important to me.  Take for example my body weight.  I've been tracking body weight now in an excel worksheet for about 7 years now.

The reason I've so closely monitored my weight over the years is that it serves as a proxy for some of my life goals.  One of my athletic life chapters was as an aspiring body builder, and as you can see in the chart above, my weight was trending upwards until my first daughter was born in 2004.  There's a lot more to track for body building than just body weight (and I have a pile of notebooks to prove it!), however, there was definitely a connection between one of my life goals at the time (improving as a body builder) and my body weight.

You can also see through the lens of my body weight numbers a period of time where my life goals dramatically changed.  For example, after my body building phase drew to a close, I buried myself in figuring out how to be a dad, and I also was really focused on climbing the ladder at work.  Tracking body weight numbers no longer mapped to a life goal, so even though I like numbers, I didn't bother tracking them as nothing would be accomplished in doing so.

The other obvious period you can glean from the body weight chart is my current passion for cycling.  I knew that there was a connection between cycling performance and body weight, so the numbers became important once again.  I initially set a goal to ride at about 150, but then at the end of my first full season of racing (2008), I realized that I was still too heavy to fly up the hills of CT.  I was hell bent on improving as a racer in 2009, and you can see that part of my improvement stemmed from the decrease in body weight.

Survived the Holidays, now it's nearing racing season.

The chart below is just a close-up of the body weight numbers since the end of last year's racing season. 

As I mentioned a while back, one of my big goals for the year is to upgrade to a Cat 3 racer.  Once again, focusing on the body weight numbers definitely gives me insight as to how well I'm executing the plan.  At the end of last season, the plan was to live without a plan for a while -- nice easy rides and no concerns about what I ate.  As the training plan became more focused in November, you can see that there's been a gradual decline in my body weight, but nothing dramatic.  I honestly didn't expect any decline during this period as I fully intended to enjoy the holiday celebrations -- I think the spiky nature of the graph until January is proof that I indulged at each of the holiday meals, but then re-focused on the diet & training in between.

Now that the holidays are over and the first race of the 2010 season is fast approaching, the spikes have disappeared from the chart, and now I'll watch a slow decline below my 2009 racing weight.  Time to start thinking about a new notch on the belt!

I'm 2/3rds the man I used to be

Lots of weight?

The other day I was at the gym and to my surprise, they guy next to me said "wow, that's a lot of weight."  I'm no small talk expert, so it's probably normal to expect a lame response from me after hearing something like this.  However, I was especially at a loss of words right then, and all I could offer was a shrug and a puzzled smile.

See, the thing is, I still sometimes feel embarrassed about the weights I'm pushing at the gym.  What that gentleman at the gym thought was impressive used to be something I'd do warm-ups with!!!  It was just over five years ago when a different Dennis, one who weighed more than 60 lbs than I do now, scoffed at such weights as "girly".  Years of added perspective plus a commitment to a sport where less (weight) is more have done a heck of a lot to change my views.

In the beginning....

My passion for cycling (others may call it a borderline addiction) is actually a relatively new chapter to my life.  I dabbled in sports as a child, but I never really excelled at anything.  I remember the time when I was at a little league baseball try-out and I got a chance to sneak a peak at the coach's evaluation sheet, and after my turn at bat was done, I distinctly remember seeing him write "no way" next to my name.  I finally found my niche around high school, and that's where my zeal for fitness first took route.  I was a nut when it came to running.  I was pretty good at it and I enjoyed it, so I committed nearly 100% to both track and field and cross country running, and I have lots of good memories and results to show from what we end up being chapt 1 of my athletic career.. 

Commitment and focus sorta took a hiatus as I entered college ("sorta" is an understatement with respect to at least my freshman year).  That lack of focus though allowed me the freedom to try a few new things, most importantly was some serious time hitting the weights.  While I won't say I ever reached the "serious" phase during college (about anything for that matter), the time in the gym planted the seeds for what would eventually become Chapt 3.

Chapt 2 of my athletic evolution was unfortunately brief.  After college, I found myself pretty quickly working at a great company and I now had for the first time in my life a decent amount of extra spending money.  For about two years I think all of it was funneled into ski related paraphernalia, plus $ for lift tickets, plus money for travel and lodging.  I was hooked on the sport and might still have been hooked today if it weren't for the multiple knee injuries I sustained while doing the moggles and jumps.

Chapt 3 (of 4 so far)

Now that I had a bum knee, I had to start looking for a way to fill the void that wouldn't aggravate my left knee.  Even today if I try to chase my kids around the backyard for 5 minutes of "scary monster", I'm going to have a knee as swollen as large as a softball.  Turns out that I can do pretty much anything that doesn't involve twisting, turning, or jarring of the knee, and believe it or not, putting insane amounts of pressure on my knee during body building never once caused the knee any problems.

I think I stuck with the body building chapter for nearly 5 years.  I was close at a few points to where I actually thought I could start competing at the armature level.  But then the kids entered my life and the time (and rest) needed to pursue body building had to be put on hold for a while, and by the time I was mentally ready to commit again to a sport, my desire to spend so much time at the gym seemed to have disappeared. 

That's about the time when I dusted off my old Cannodale, and then the last nearly four years have led me to where I am today, up at 5:05 AM riding the trainer...

Still in my system

Some of the things I learned during Chapt 3 still stick with me today.  When I was most successful at lifting, I had a stack of note books that I used to keep track of my daily results.  I had yearly/quarterly high-level plans that I spent hours on continually tweaking as I learned giving me guidance as to how best to periodize the overall work-out to ensure I avoided plateaus.   When the "plan" called for it, I was at the gym twice a day, with lots of hours dedicated to the endeavor.  And like today, I used my body weight as a good proxy for progress against the plan.

I don't think I'll ever re-open that chapter of my athletic career, but it's pretty clear to me that it never quite closed and some of the themes continue on.

Glastonbury Bikeways

Nobody looks like me

I know this is going to sound pathetic, but about a year and a half ago I aborted an attempt to volunteer with the Glastonbury Bikeways.  At the time I was looking for a way to make a few more social connections aside from those I had with my (now former) racing team.  I am a transplant from Massachusetts, and aside from my in-laws, I didn't have any friendships established in CT.  Furthermore, I was (and still am) a "remote" employee, so I didn't have the option to buddy up with new co-workers in the local area.  I either had to get comfortable seeing my cat all day in my office and then hanging with just the family after work day after day, or I had to get out and find social connections with people with common interests.  With "Bike" in the name, I figured I'd give the local committee a shot.

When I finally showed up for the meeting back in 2007, I remember making it within about 15 feet of the conference room.  I peered inside the windows, saw a handful of people, and none of them looked like me.  In retrospect, I shouldn't have been surprised as there is no false advertising on their website.  There were a few older gentlemen and a few ladies of varying ages.  All of them seemed to have the trim bodies of an active cyclist, but there were no 30 something year-old wanna-be bicycle racing faces.  I'm ashamed to admit it, but I pretended to be lost or distracted, looked down at my cell phone to take a phony call, and then just walked away.

Changed man

I had walked away from that meeting thinking that the committee would do nothing for me, but I never bothered to ask to remove my name from their email lists.  I had become accustomed to quickly file them away in the trash-bin upon receipt, so I had essentially just ruled them out as noise.  However, for some reason I hesitated earlier this month before deleting the note, and that feeling of "shame" came up again for walking way from that meeting forced me to take another look at their website.  I didn't realize it back in 2007 when social connections were priority #1 for me, but now with a somewhat evolved set of life goals, it occurred to me that those faces actually were a lot more similar to me than I first thought.   

Racing is still important to me, but it isn't the only reason I cycle.  After attending last Tuesday's meeting, I now know that those faces map to people who enjoy exploring the outdoors, people who want to be healthy (and help others in the community to get healthier), and people who want to see a little less pollution from cars and a little more sweat from cyclists.  I also bumped into a non-racing member of my bike club.  There might not have been any other 30 something bike racers in the room, but it turned out that I had sorely misjudged the book by the cover in my aborted first attempt back in 07. 

Looks like I might have found another outlet to check more boxes off on my 2010 goals!

Why do I ride, and 2010 Goals

Motivations

I rarely do things without at least some vague idea as to how it fits into the bigger plan (though I leave a little wiggle room to schedule in some spontaneity ;-> ).  However, as I wrote about in my initial post, I spent much of 2009 riding without much of a purpose, at least not a purpose that I gave much thought to.  So, what follows from here is my first attempt at serious thought about the goals that lie behind my serious time commitment to the sport of cycling.  What I hope to write about in most of my future posts this year will be tied back to one or more of these goals.  (Man, I want to strike that last sentence as it sounds like something I would say at work.  While it is a true sentence, I do not want bike riding to end up feeling like work, which, ironically, is why I want to keep myself focused through this blog on why I ride.)

1) Upgrade to Cat 3 

OK, it's in writing now, public on the internet, so there's no backing down now.  I was a bit reluctant to commit to this goal as I'm still relatively new to cycling (last year was only my 2nd year of racing, 4th year of riding) and I'm not exactly sure what it will take to get to the point where I'm on par with the Cat 3s.  To date I've mostly been setting goals to improve my personal Watt/kg records, but I do enjoy the thrill of competition against others, so I wanted a goal that pits me against blood and flesh and not simply against #s on a computer screen.

2) More family bike time

I'm a married man with two kids (ages 5 and 3 1/2).  While I'm the only cycling fanatic amongst the Desmarais clan, they all enjoy hitting the road, especially on family rides.  As the kids grow up it's possible that they may lose interest, so right now I want to take advantage of the opportunity while it lasts.  I often feel my best after a good family ride.  I get a great work-out (as I'm usually pulling both girls and I'm using a heavier bike) and I get to see the roads with a different perspective that only kids bring to the table.

3) Stay Healthy

Aside from just a few colds and one bad case of the stomach flu, I pretty much have had a clean bill of health each of the last three years.  Furthermore, I've been able to keep fairly trim despite my body's natural inclination to pack on the pounds.  I don't think its a coincidence that that this healthy period has aligned with my commitment to regular cycling.

4) Reduce my Carbon Footprint

This goal will be a bit tough for me.  I live at the top of a fairly steep hill, so there are no easy spins to the convenience store.  Furthermore, on the days I do commute to work (usually just once per week), I trek up to Hopkinton MA, so it will be the rare work day when I can swap the car with the bike.  Still, I've put it down as a goal, so now I'll be forced to figure something out despite these challenges.

5) Explore and Experiment

No, this isn't a last minute addition to the list.  The first four items have laser-beam focus, so you might be tempted to think that I threw this one on here just to avoid the perception that I'm a robot.  Many days I do feel like a robot as I'm churning out miles on the trainer (like right now), so you can imagine what joy I feel as I explore a new road, see new scenic vistas, and challenge myself with new terrain.  I don't do this often enough, so that's why I put it on the list.

OK, that's the end of the list.  Plus, I gotta pickup the pace on the trainer now...