I think I might be running into a bit of a wall here. For the past week I've been averaging only 1700 calories a day, which is just a bit under my basal rate (although if you subtract that frickin' Brownie Blizzard that number would have been closer to 1600). In other words I should be losing weight lying in bed all day. On top of it I've been burning another 700 a day riding, and another 800 just doing whatever it is I do. I think that number might be a little high though... I really don't do much.

In other words my deficit is about 3500-1700, which is 1800. I'm eating almost half what I should be. I think that's not enough. From what I've been reading, your basal rate goes down if you don't eat enough. It sorta defeats it's self by shutting down things.

I'm going to increase my calorie intake, possibly today but definitely tomorrow in preparation for Saturday. I'll probably go back to 2000 calories for now, and try and finally make Wednesday a regular zone 3 cardio day.

I think that might explain why I felt like I've never worked harder than I did today in the road drills class. I was so wet I looked like I had just gotten out of the shower. It was that crazy!

I was working so hard I also learned something about the resistance knob. For the first two or three turns there is no resistance on the wheel at all. That's why some people keep turning and turning and turning their knob and seem to keep going forever. I think some trainers are working in this area of the resistance too.

From that point there's about one complete turn where the resistance goes from zero to hard. That is where I've spent all my time spinning. Usually in the beginning of the class I put it at the beginning of the turn and rarely go past one complete turn. That's why I want to kick the ass of the instructors who bark out "okay, another half turn" every two minutes.

On Tuesday we had an instructor sub in for our regular spin instructor. She has been doing it since the the gym started offering it seven years ago. I couldn't stand her... literally. The way she kept yelling out, encouraging us and yelping was definitely working more for the women. It was like what I heard when I was in Loblaws shopping with the Goodlife upstairs. Sorry, doesn't work for guys, who make up almost half of the class. She made us stand up and sit down every 16 beats of the song. Yeah right. I sat and concentrated on what? Oh yeah... my spinning.

I'm certain that instructor was working in the first two turns of the knob. The ones where a half turn meant nothing at all. I touched it on the last class, but today I confirmed that after the full turn where it gets really stiff it plateaus. It's still stiff, but the increase in resistance is relatively small. It takes two full turns to make it unbelievably stiff, where I can't even stand and push all the way down. Yeah, I hit it during this class. Awesome.

So there are basically three ranges. One that's nothing, one narrow one that starts to get really hard, and one wide one where you really get your ass kicked. I think I've found a spinning goal. This will take a while...