These last five pounds made a lot more of a difference than I would have thought. It seemed like I was going to hit it only two weeks after 175, because after the 383 km riding weekend I was dropping almost a pound a day for a week! It leveled off though, and now I'm back on track around the same rate I was losing before.

Now I'm back down to about the weight I was at when I met the girls in Scarborough about ten years ago. This is where I was in 1995.

Here's another classic fat geo recreation:


I'll admit this one isn't exactly fair. I have an extra shirt button or two undone, which I didn't realize until after. Plus my abs are a little tighter because I'm holding my head up. Not to mention I'm on my back... my stomach doesn't look that flat, but compared to the other picture... I was actually shocked when I saw this pic!

Now I'm really actually feeling and looking smaller and lighter. My pants size has dropped from 36 to last week I bought a 32. Last time I wore a 32 was when I came back from Greece ten years ago. Kim's mom said they were so tight she could tell if I was cut or not! I also bought a medium shirt. Medium... and it fits great!

People seem to be surprised and supportive, especially ones I haven't seen in a while. I never realized that I was that big before, and I didn't even really understand how other people saw me until now. It was so gradual that it didn't seem like much. What's another five pounds? Especially when it's over the course of a year.

I'm surprised at how much your look changes people's perceptions of you. There was one girl I haven't seen since I started who I saw a little while ago. After the common "you're looking good... not like you didn't look good before..." she said something to the effect of "so with that new body you have a new attitude too." I don't know. Maybe I do to some extent, probably because of how active I've been, but I'm still the same person.

It's also made a huge difference with my cycling. Now I don't have issues climbing hills at all anymore. Often I'm able to power up fairly steep hills without slowing down much at all. I'm not afraid to climb, and I don't get upset when I see the hill I'm going down turn into an uphill. The corollary to that is I don't get as much speed going down hills. I don't know if I'll ever be able to top my max speed of 73 km/h in this province with these hills. My average speed has risen, so I'm not bothered by it at all.

I'm going to start running again soon. I'm thinking of starting after this weekend. My IT band should hopefully be rested by that point. I'm really starting to feel like I'm missing going to the gym. It's really upsetting me, and I'm afraid if this lasts any longer I'm going to have trouble getting back into it.

Last night Kate told me about a 5k run I think in October. She's going to do the 1k walk with her son. It's to raise money for cancer. I think I'm going to do it. Hopefully in a month I'll be able to run the 5k straight, but I'll have no problems doing it as a walk/run if I have to. At least it'll give me a short-term running goal.

The past week and a bit I've had some trouble keeping up with keeping my calorie intake much lower than my expenditure, so my loss has been leveling off. I'm starting to get a little tired of all the sacrifices I've made over the past while. I've had fries twice in the past week already. I've eaten processed cheese. It was okay to eat like that when I was riding my bike to work every other day, and then doing another 100k on the weekend, but with this damn knee issue it's hard to stop. I'm still keeping a calorie deficit, but I've only been averaging a 500 calorie deficit instead of the usual 1000. Next week I need to get back into the swing of things.

Long-term outlook is looking good. I've started to make modifications to my plans lately, now that I know better what I'm capable of and what I need to do. I'm still obviously holding out on the running part, but that's happening soon. Swimming... well I haven't been motivated for that yet. I'm thinking the fall/winter is the best time to start. The Goodlife with the pool is at Yonge and Bloor at the Manulife Centre. I think I'm going to go there maybe twice a week by subway and then take the subway to work. It'll take some extra time, but that could be a lot of fun.

I'm still planning on dropping to 140-145. I'm still on pace to do it by new year's. Most people still think it's taking things too far. They don't know what my body type really is like. None of them knew me when I was that size before. I agree that I'll probably be a little too skinny by that point. Maybe not my legs, but my upper body will be. I mean I can already see ribs.

The new plan is that once I lose all the body fat I want to lose (which should happen around 140), is that I'm going to bulk up a bit with muscle. Not a lot, because it really is detrimental to my performance. I just want to have a little size up top to get rid of the ribs. I can put on the size slowly by lifting weights and running a small calorie surplus that's high in protein. That way it won't be all chunk chunk, but it should come in with some definition.

Maybe I'll get up to around 150-160 pounds, but no higher than that. I don't want to be big, I want to look and feel good. I may by at the halfway point for losing weight, but I still have a lot of work I want to do. That's good, because I'm enjoying this way too much to reach my goal already!

After a couple beers on Saturday I was talking to Sue about her work. She works at Churchill Cellars. I'm not sure exactly what they do, I think they import wine. I really don't know anything about them yet. She told me about how she was busy planning a meeting for her wine tasters to come in to the office and... taste some wines?

The wine tasters are a group of people around the province who go into LCBO locations and give out free samples of products. Doesn't sound like much, really. I asked her more questions, and on a lark I told her I'd give it a shot. It was a pretty short conversation. I asked, "Are there any girls?" Sue's like, "I don't know, there might be, I haven't met a few of the people coming in." That was good enough for me.

Keep in mind this was after a couple beers, and I had just come back from a long ride, so I was pretty hyper. Unfortunately my memory of the conversation went completely south right after. Sue called me this morning to confirm if I was coming. "Yeah I'm there, but what is it that's going on tonight?" Totally forgot.

I didn't have my Smart Serve yet, which was definitely a problem. You need to have this to be able to serve alcohol in the province. I was going to do it on Sunday, but... well I forgot about it. I got it done in an hour. It could have taken much less time, but I actually watched and read all the training material. I didn't know I didn't need it.

Basically all it's trying to teach you is that you're not allowed to serve people alcohol when they're drunk, and it tries to help you identify people who are drunk. It also says that you have to do everything you can to limit your liability in a situation where someone gets into trouble by drinking in your establishment. Pretty basic stuff, but it actually is reasonably helpful. Learned a little bit.

The meeting she planned was actually a wine tasting. I've never been to one before, so it was pretty freaking cool! We had Mark the communications director telling us all about the wines we were drinking, while we ate cheese, crackers and pastrami sandwiches. It doesn't get much better than that. We also had to sign our lives away or something like that, but whatever.

I really don't know much about wines yet. It's such a subtle thing, and if anyone knows me, I'm really not known for my subtlety. I only half remember the wines we had, and what I liked and didn't like. I couldn't allow myself to throw the wine in my glass out between bottles. What a waste! Someone could get drunk off that!

Kim started writing notes on the placemats. In one of them she told me it's not an open bar. Haha. Oh yeah, forgot to mention, Kim was there. So was our friend Carol. I had no idea she was going to be there, even though Sue told me on Saturday that Kim was busy doing a tasting for her. I think I'm losing my memory again. Kim didn't know I was coming down either. It was a funny surprise, even though we had found out about each other on the way down.

The tasting went really well. I was absolutely fascinated by Mark's descriptions of the wines. He knew all kinds of details about how they're made, what goes in to them, who's who. I can't believe there's a whole world of things that I know nothing about! (no, seriously... I don't think I know everything, but I've never felt like anything was beyond my scope of knowledge... as long as I've got Wikipedia in front of me ;)) Mark was really passionate about wine, from the debate over screw caps and cork, to using tetra paks and freshness to the types of oak used in the barrels. I'm really going to have to do some research so I know better what the hell he's actually talking about next time.

It was awesome to finally meet Carly, who I have to say is even cooler in real life. We didn't get to chill much today, but it's great to meet someone you've been communicating with for the past while.

I mentioned how we signed our lives away. Well today I committed to doing ten of these four hour tastings. We go into an LCBO location, set up the tasting booth, give out free samples and sell bottles of wine! Yeah, me... sell. How funny is that? It's an experience, and it's something that's way outside my boundaries of comfort. I can't wait to do it.

Yeah, it's not an open bar, but it was open enough for this post to be a little scattered. ;)

This was not the brightest ride ever. I started with a little nutritional pre-planning Friday night. Just before I went to bed I made myself a full cup (uncooked) of rice. I love carbs. Rice, bread, pasta... everything else I eat is just to make those go down easier. I ate much more than I normally would, but it was okay, I had the Scugog Century the next day. I needed the nourishment for the 160k.

Saturday morning I woke up in a panic. I slept in a little late (I only slept four hours). I was a little excited to say the least. I quickly got everything together, threw the bike in the car and left. I figured if I was too late to start the century I'd at least get to get a decent 100k ride in.

Along the way I passed Jason driving his race Civic to assumedly a Solo 2 event. That was a little freaky, I've been away from that whole scene for so long it's almost surprising it's still going on. Kinda like the rave scene. Very odd, yet comforting to see people I used to know still active. I don't think it's a coincidence that those are the among the few people in the scene who didn't have the same bad habits as most other people I knew.

I got off at Durham College, but the special skills campus. Oops. I used to race in that parking lot, so I just assumed it was that. It wasn't, it was at the main one. It didn't take too long to get there, but I figured I'd just ride on my own if I couldn't join the main ride. When I got there I didn't see anybody looking like they had anything to do with a ride. I drove through all the parking lots and found nothing.

It was the wrong day. The ride was on Sunday, not Saturday.

I was pretty pissed that I mixed it up. This isn't the first time I've done anything like this before. The first time was actually for a bicycle rodeo when I was probably about 10. I qualified for it one year in school, and showed up at the event on Sunday when the event happened on the Saturday. I showed up for a lapping day near Kingston last year on Saturday for an event which was on the Sunday. When will I learn?

I figured I'd make the best of it, so I drove down toward Darlington Provincial Park to park the car and take a little trip along the waterfront trail. I also knew Dave was racing and/or qualifying for a pretty big race at Mosport. I figured I could ride east for 50k, ride north 25k, the backtrack 50k back to Mosport, then make a 25k trip back to the car. If I felt really daring I could make it a century and go for back to backs. It would also give me a chance to see how my knee is feeling with some mileage on it.

Oh yeah, my knee. Not my knee exactly, but when I added the aero bars and moved my seat around I started getting pain on the outside of my left knee. From what I got off this thread on Beginner Triathlete is that it's probably my IT Band. Not good. It can be a pretty chronic issue. I made some adjustments to my seat so I was hoping it would help. Maybe it was an isolated incident.

The ride was nice, but really hard to follow. Because I had to pay to park at the park, I went to the nuclear plant instead. Nuclear plants kinda creep me out. I know they're safe. I know there's nothing to worry about. It's not even so much the radiation I'm worried about, it's more about the electrical equipment all around.

I've never admitted this, but during my raving days I used to actually be freaked out by electricity. I wouldn't say scared of it, but kinda. I think I can trace it back to this show on CTV where they showed the most common fatal household accidents. It was meant as a helpful warning, but it scared the hell out of me. I especially remember the woman poking her knife in a toaster and getting zapped. I've been afraid of toasters since.

All the high powered lines, and especially the buzzing sounds coming from them I just don't like. So I wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. I rode east a bit, but I had a lot of trouble following the trail. I could see places where the Bike Rally people had stenciled red arrows in the pavement. More echoes. At least I assumed they're the ones who did it. You can find them all around the area.

I turned north a little early. There were a lot of hills, but the roads were quite quiet. I think I'm going to spend more time riding out that way. It really is nice. The GPS told me to turn left to get to Mosport, but I had a lot of time. I figured I'd go the opposite way for a while and see how far I'd go before turning around. I went straight up a big hill. I'm so happy that big hills like that don't seem like all that big of a deal anymore.

I made it up to the Ganaraska Forest Centre. It's where you buy passes to use the different trails through the forest. They have a bunch of different people using the trails. There are sections for mountain bikers, hikers, dirt bike and quad riders, and even horses.

Looking at the GPS, the road I was on continued just past the gate where you pay. I rode up to read the pricing and thought there was no way I was going to pay the $5 mountain biking fee when I was just there to ride 20 metres to get to the road. Or at least I thought that's what I was going to do. As I pulled to a stop I had my first fall. Yeah, I forgot to clip out of the pedals. First time that's happened this year. I've gone mountain biking with the pedals and rode well over a thousand kilometers and never fallen. It was embarrassing even though I don't think anyone saw.

I figured I'd just take the road a little further east and find another route north. Might as well make a ride out of it. The road kept getting smaller and smaller. The GPS said it was a road. It had a name and everything. I figured it was just temporary and it would just open up again. It was still a road.

There was a clearing beside the road which apparently was where people are supposed to take out their horses. The GPS was showing that there was a road behind it, so I took it. I figured I've made it this far, why not? I'd hop on this little trail which should take me back to the extension of the road I was traveling on. I figured I'd maybe have to walk for 400 metres or so. No biggie.

It was actually really pleasant. I was thinking that maybe when I get too old for being as hardcore as I am now that maybe I'd take up hiking. It's a pretty low stress thing to do, and I've always loved being outside. It was one of my favourite things to do on class trips to the forest. I thought it was hilarious that this was showing up on the GPS as a main road, no different than the main paved throughfare that I came up on.



There was one section with a little pond. There were these little docks, I presume they were there for fishing or something. They were right in the middle of nowhere, and I couldn't even find a route to get to them without getting wet. I'm not a fan of leeches, and it wasn't stupid hot out, so I opted not to. But it was a really nice place to chill out and eat another Clif bar.


Things started getting stupid here. I got to where the road was supposed to be, but it was just another trail. I somehow got off the horseback trails and was now in motorcycle land. Bikes would come out of nowhere, buzzing and sliding around. It looks like a hell of a lot of fun, but I know if I picked up another hobby I'd go right back to where I used to be. Can't do it. I kept walking.

I made it to another intersection. These trails were laid out just like real roads. They were all straight and intersected into Ts. Still no road. I was close to a small town. I saw a car pass me, and he seemed to be heading toward it. I figured I could follow him and get to some paved roads quickly. But I listened to the GPS. It told me I was right at Baseline Road, which I had actually heard of before. I figured it couldn't be too long until it becomes a major road. It didn't.

I ended up walking through the forest for an hour and a half. It wasn't so fun. For a while I was alternating between walking, running and riding. It was too hard to ride the whole way though, as most of the ground was sand. A car drove up from behind, and when they passed the driver yelled out in this strong Newfoundland accent "you're a long ways from a road, eh?" I laughed out loud and said "seriously!"

Eventually the road opened up, right around highway 115. I was running out of time to get to the track to see Dave and Ken do some driving, so I went straight there. I walked about 10k through the forest in about an hour and a half. Next time I'm going to listen to my instinct before jumping in with the GPS.

It was really nice to get to Mosport. I found Dave and the Kensai Racing crew, as well as Rick and Kristie from HADA. Rick and Kristie just sold their S2000. It was the same year and the same colour as mine. It was a little crazy. But not only that, but they also have a yellow Type R and a Civic that they race with (different colour than mine though, ugh). I found out that they used to be into riding a lot too. Rick has a Giant OCR too, and his mountain bike is a Giant like mine as well. That was really freaky!

Kristie had done a ride in New Zealand with a few people from the TBN, which is really getting me excited to do a long tour like that. Hopefully my knee will hold up on something like that though.

I didn't have time to stick around to watch the full race, but I caught Dave and Ken split the qualifying session.




The ride back was very fast. I went from 1100 ft. to 300 in only 20k. Needless to say I averaged 32 km/h. There are a lot of hills in the area. I can see why the Oshawa Cycling Club does a lot of rides up there. I think I'm going to ride in the area a lot more. The hills seem to be so much easier to ride up lately, and the scenery is really nice.

You can get the stats on the first part of the ride here, and the second part here.

This was by far the fastest, scariest and most exhillarating ride I've had. I don't know if it was the Starbucks, or the warm-up in the morning, or if I had a lot of built-up aggression, but I can't belive how good of a ride that was.

It started off fairly slow until I ran a couple yellow/red lights along Ellesmere (shhhhh). I kept enough momentum to fly down the hills that I had, and I didn't have too much of a problem coming back up. I have a new strategy for when I get to a red light that's halfway down a big hill. I stop at the top of the hill and wait for the other street's light to turn yellow. It's much easier at night because you can actually see the light. During the day you just have to read traffic and guess. I seem to be timing it well and make it straight down the hill without stopping.

After the red lights I managed to draft a bus up and over the bridge which goes over the GO/SRT line at a very decent pace. I only lost it after the top of the hill, but then caught up to it again and passed it before crossing Kennedy.

It started getting very dark around the section that connects me from Ellesmere to Lawrence in zig zag alley (hell, it deserves a name, it's one of the ride's hilights). Maybe I'll come up with a better name later. That's when I realized I really need a front light. Something on my helmet so I can make light contact with drivers' eyes. Maybe not as bright (or heavy) as my mountain bike's light, but definitely something stronger than most of these "street" lights.

After crossing Vic Park I actually passed a van. It was a straight-up, clean pass on a downhill. Not a crazy hill, but it was enough to comfortably fly by him. I've never done anything like that before. I'm sure I was speeding, but I didn't care. What did bother me was that I couldn't see the road at all. I went over a few potholes and ridges in the road that I didn't expect. No aero here, just a tight tuck. This was the craziest part.

By Don Mills I checked my GPS. I was averaging 31 km/h. I've NEVER gone that fast for that long. Granted I was close to the bottom of my ride and had a couple hundred metres of bus drafting, but it was unreal! My average heart rate was into the high 150's, which is much higher than I've ever kept up for that long.

After hitting the bottom of the Don Valley, the ride uphill wasn't much to write about. Crossing Bayview I nearly got knocked off by a right turning motorcycle. He had just passed me, so he must have been aware of my presence. There was one car turning left, and enough room for the car behind him and the bike to go around to go through the intersection.

I was a little impatient since the light had been green for a while, so I tried to sneak around the car and the bike on the right. Yes, I know this is partly my fault. I waited for the car to go straight (which he did), but before I passed the bike something just didn't seem right. I gave him a little extra room, and the fucker made a complete right turn in front of me. I yelled out "nice signal job," and under my breath said some not-so-nice things. Maybe it wasn't quite so under my breath. Sorry if anyone had kids within earshot.

It just goes to show that there's no replacement for experience. And hopefully nothing bad happens while you're getting this experience. I'm pretty good at being able to read what people in cars are doing and thinking, but there are some things from a cyclist's perspective that I definitely need to learn better.

Avg. HR: 159
Avg. speed on MotionBased: 28.0 km/h
Avg. speed on GPS: 30.1
Distance: 20.35 km
Time: 40.35 min
Total time: 44.45

I don't know if this link will work, but if you have IE and Adobe SVG viewer installed you may be able to view a dot race of the ride here.

I've decided to finally get rid of the race car. I've never actually used this one to race, but that was what I originally intended it for. I'm so done with cars it's not even funny. This one looked and drove great when I test drove it, but when I brought it home I realized more and more shit that was wrong with it. Never buy a car from a mechanic.

I fixed all the things wrong with it but it's still not suitable as a winter car, so it's gone. I'm asking 17,650, but of course it's negotiable. If anyone's interested, you can get all the details here, and some high rez pics here.

It's sad to see it go, especially when it's all clean and looking pretty like it does now. But it's a good thing, right?

I just wanted to give a little update on MotionBased, which is looking cooler and cooler every time I look at it. After my spin class I rode to work at an unusually high HR.

I was looking at this thread on Beginner Triathlete about determining your lactate threshold (LT) and by extension your maximum HR. Basically what it says is to warm up, do a 20 minute time trial, and take the average HR. You should feel like you've given it your all by the end. That is supposed to be your LT.

Today in the spin class I warmed up for 20 minutes, then went balls out for the next 20 and took the average. I know it's not the ideal condition for a test like that, with all the transitions between high intensity and low intensity, but I just wanted a rough idea since I had already done a max HR test two years ago. I wanted to know how accurate it is.

My average was 153 bpm. That was pretty damn close to the 155 that I calculated from my max HR. I'm sure if I had treated the 20 minutes as a proper time trial it would have been bumped up a couple bpm. So it looks like everything has been working properly. I'd still like to get a professional test anyway. Still curious about the accuracy of these home-based solutions.

The ride to work was pretty good. Nothing really to report on, they're pretty standard. But I have a MotionBased log now. I'm going to use my other blog to update on all my rides like this, but I just want to show it.

Here's another non-cycling post for ALB! Yes, I'm still on a break until tomorrow, where (thankfully) I have a spin class. I'm probably going to ride to work after. I've got a lot to catch up on.

I made a few really exciting purchases today. At least exciting for me. First I absolutely needed a new pair of jeans. I'm going to save the story for my 170 post, which should be coming up very soon. I'll just say that I'm really excited about wearing them tomorrow. Sheesh, I'm starting to sound like a girl!

After that I made a trip to Kitchen Stuff Plus to grab a food scale. Of course I got the digital model, which seems fairly accurate. I think it goes down to the gram, maybe two. Not accurate enough to become a weed dealer, but it's good enough for food. It does a great job at figuring the proper calorie amounts of food I've been eating. When I got home I realized how far off my guesstimates have been. I think I've been eating a lot more than I've accounted for.

I also grabbed my first real knife. It's a Henckels Professional "S" Chef's Knife. It was a fairly random purchase. I've wanted a real knife for a long time, but I haven't been able to justify spending actual money on an actual knife. My chef's knife was starting to feel like I was cutting with a 2x4, so I figured I'd give it a shot. I looked at the 4-star model, which was priced almost the same. The Professional "S" seemed to be weighted a little better and had a sharper, more defined handle. It's easier to feel how it's situated.

I couldn't believe how good that knife felt when I got home. I grabbed some fresh tomatoes and I couldn't believe how easily the knife slid through. It's just amazing. I never would have appreciated how good it is unless I had the crappy knife before though. I'm going to have to take pretty good care of this. It already doesn't fit into my knife block. There's something else I'll need to grab...

Just a quick completely off-topic post. I didn't do any riding today, because I finally got started on cleaning my apartment. I absolutely dread cleaning up until I get started. Then I usually do an awesome job. It got me started thinking about my obsessive nature and how I can actually use it to my advantage.

For one I could somehow find a way to obsess over keeping things in order. Breaking these weekend-long cleaning sessions into multiple mini tasks. Just like I'm keeping track of calories in and out on fitday. Or money. It's always been a big thing for me. I treat it like I treated food before I started logging. I spend what I have. If I have more money I spend more. Whatever I feel like... it's very easy to justify purchases.

I figured what I need is a money version of fitday. Keep track of every penny that comes in, and every penny that goes out. It's a brilliant idea! It's more than a money diet, it's a lifestyle change! I haven't found anything like that yet, so if any web developer is looking for a cool app this could be it. I'd do it myself, but I really don't care for programming. Maybe if there was a kit that could help me create it. Maybe.

While cleaning I sampled a couple new albums. I had a listen to a couple songs off the relatively new Public Enemy album, Rebirth of a Nation. I was expecting it to be an updated version of It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. I didn't know they've been producing new stuff since '98. Amazing but true. I was thinking that with all the golden age nostalgia going on in hip hop right now these guys would be able to put out an album that would knock everyone's socks off.

The album sucks. The rapping might be okay. It's nice to hear some politically charged lyrics again. It sure beats the hell out of all this sex and violence garbage that passes for music these days (oh dog, did I just say that? I must be getting old). The production is horrendous. It sounds like someone pushed the "hip hop" button on a crappy Wal Mart keyboard. Maybe more like a "hip hop" demo that comes with some music software or something. It's completely unimaginative and flat. It's even worse than Air Farina.

As a side note, I really don't understand the reviewers on Amazon. It looks like most people actually liked both albums. I can't believe someone commented that Air Farina was "cerebral." OMFG!!11!!11 About as cerebral as a hammer being taken to your head.

I don't know why I've been listening to hip hop lately. I've only dabbled in it since it went all gangster around '94. Maybe it's all the nostalgia.

Very different feeling with the aero bars. Today I rode to Mississauga to pick up my car from the body shop, and then rode home from work after. It was a 1500 calorie of activity day.

The route was pretty good. I used the route on the recreation map, and it took me pretty far away from traffic. It was a little hard to get used to the aero bars though. They don't seem like real triathlon bars, they're more relaxed. The forearm rests are pretty high. I want to lower my drop bars more now, but I want to get used to this first.

I'm not sure if I'm any faster when I'm in the aero position, but I sure feel like I am. It's probably just the way I feel. I feel like I'm really going for it, so I probably do. I'm a little jerky though, and have trouble going straight. It's almost like when I ride with no hands. I can't keep it straight at all, so I'm very nervous around traffic. I'm sure with time it'll get better.

The ride out was pretty chilled out. I got there in over an hour, at an average speed of 25 km/h. My HR was 137. Still pretty decent though. The ride home was a different story though.

I had just discovered Motion Based, so I wanted to get a good test track. Motion Based is a tool that copies the info from your GPS and gives you some really cool charts and graphs. It gives you everything together. It also plays back your ride, and you can even show it against a previous ride. Slick.

I went for broke on the ride home. My average speed was an awesome high of 29 km/h. It would have been 30 if it weren't for that last set of hills. My heart rate responded though at 148. Definitely too high to maintain, but it felt so good when I got home and it showed only 42 minutes of riding.

I'm going to keep trying on these aero bars for a while. They at least give me another position. Maybe finally my hands won't be falling asleep now.

I figured to congratulate my weekend ride I'd pick up some goodies. I've wanted a tri bike for a while, but I don't know if I'm going to be able to handle riding in that position. My back might completely give out, or maybe I just won't like it.

I calculated that if I could move my seat forward 30mm it would approximate the seat post angle of a tri bike. If I just added some aero bars to that, I'd be most of the way there. The seat was easy to do, I just flipped the seat post around. I lost the ability to move the front of the seat down, so it's definitely not ideal. But it works.

I made a trip to my local Cyclepath, where I picked up the Golden Horseshoe cycling map, a presta to schrader adapter, brake pads, tubes and some chain lube. Believe it or not I've never lubed my chain. They didn't have any aero bars in stock. I went to D'Ornella's (because of the convenience factor again), and they actually had a pretty good selection.

This is the last time I'm going to say anything about this shop, but I figured out exactly what's wrong with it to me. It seems like if you're not one of their buddies they really don't give a shit. I was there listening to one of the guys helping this woman. She seemed to have a pretty expensive bike, and sounds like she's dealt with them before.

The guy working there was completely sucking her dick. I wasn't listening too closely at this point, but she wasn't really saying all that much. Something about trying another bike out. This guy was totally all over her story. He was fitting her on the bike (which I never even got when I bought my bike there), and just having a totally casual time. It just didn't seem right. He was talking to her about this customer who had an OCR. This caught my attention because that's what I was buying for. He said that the customer kept buying all these speed parts for it, and he didn't understand what he was doing, because it's just an OCR. Why would you buy Zipp wheels for it and all this other stuff.

I can understand what he was saying, but it's pretty rude to talk shit about your customers to others. Especially when someone else can hear them. And especially when they've got an OCR and are buying parts for it! Unreal! Maybe it was just timing or luck, but that bugged me.

I picked up the bars I wanted and went to the guy behind the cash. At the same time a delivery guy walked in. He was going to take me, but I motioned to the delivery guy and said I had a question. He dealt with him, then I asked "would you recommend these for a road bike?" He said "what bike did you get?" and I said, "an OCR2." He said, "they'll fit." That's it. If he thought they were shit he could have said it. I might have spent more money. If he thought they were great that's all I wanted to know. Instead I get a fitment answer. I didn't ask that. I knew they'd fit. Whatever.

I'd put them on my list, but frankly they're too convenient. I definitely will never make a major purchase there again, and I will not recommend them to anybody. I'm done.

I also picked up some yellow bar tape, and when I got to work I ordered some Michelin Pro2 Race tires for cheap. Three tires for the price of one at any other shop. Awesome. But when I got home and started installing everything and rolling the tape on, I realized that my bike is grey with orange accents, not yellow. Ugh. It looks stupid now. The tires are wrong. Oh well. I hate to sound so vain, but whatever. Maybe I am a little bit. I just want my bike to match.

The installation and adjustments went well. I cleaned it nicely and found a fun place to mount my GPS. It's totally at eye level, right in front. Now it rides like new again. I didn't realize how out of tune it actually was. I wish I had done that before...

The ride back from the cottage was a lot more than I bargained for. I spent some time trying to figure out a slightly different route to come back on. I wanted to avoid the hills around Hardwood Hills (funny how there are hills there), so I played around a little and decided to go close to Orillia and along the shore of Lake Simcoe. It seemed like a pretty good idea. It was only a few km extra, but there would be a lot less hills.

I retraced my route back, and ended up at Old Barrie Rd. I kept going just past and there was this huge hill. I really didn't want to have to climb it. I looked at the GPS and noticed how close I was to Orillia. It was right there. I debated back and forth about it for a while, but after doing a rough calculation I decided that I might as well go through Orillia and complete my goal of circumnavigating Lake Simcoe.

I don't know how good of an idea that actually was. I had to join Highway 12 right after I got back on Old Barrie Rd. It was still busy, and there wasn't much room. Luckily there was a very big downhill just after passing the 400. There are a few trails and routes that use Highway 12's bridge between Lake Simcoe and Lake Couchiching, so there was quite a bit of room. In the winter there are snowmobile tracks all over it.

After Orillia while still on Highway 12 I passed a chip truck and had some well deserved fries and a juicy burger with peameal bacon. Rrrrowl! It didn't sit all that well though. I soon got to turn off, and took a bit of an around about way back to Highway 12.

Going around the eastern side of Lake Simcoe sucks. For some sections you have no choice but to take Highway 12 or 48. Especially on weekends they can be extremely busy. They're the biggest routes to go around the lake. There are a lot of people going to or coming back from cottages. There was so much traffic in one section where it was completely bumper to bumper. I caught up to cars that had passed me as long as ten minutes before. It was a pretty good feeling.

There were some lakeside sections which were nice though. I got to pass over the part where the Trent/Severn waterway connects to Lake Simcoe, which was nice. A lot of people were kite surfing in the area too. That must be the new cool hobby. Speaking of the waterway, I think next year I might try and kayak to the cottage from Lake Simcoe. That could be a lot of fun (or pain).

After being unceremoniously dumped onto Highway 48 for a long stretch, I finally made it to my turn off. It was probably the most stressful section from the whole weekend. Around this point I discovered just how far the ride actually was going to be. When I was roughly calculating I took the road routes. It looked like I was only going to ride 10 km more. But when I put the lake shore routes I was taking in, it looked like I was going to be at 200 km by the time I got back to Finch Station. Not quite so cool.

I was feeling pretty down by this point, knowing that I still had 70-80 km more. I went for a little dip in the lake and everything came back! Up to this point I was fighting a very strong headwind. It was coming from the northwest, and it was causing some serious waves. It wasn't easy to get there. But right after the dip I got on Warden and used the tailwind to get back.

Warden was a nice ride. I throughly loved the hill after Stouffville Rd, especially with the tailwind. A little further down I could see cop car lights and pylons. They had blocked off the road to traffic, but the cop was m moving his car. I rode up and asked if I could sneak through.

The cop said nobody's getting through. Someone got smoked by a car. He must have noticed that I looked a little confused (smoked by a car?), so he told me, "he was on a bike," while motioning toward mine. "He's dead." "Shit," was all I could say. What can you say?

I was just thinking about how safe Warden is. Same with Leslie and even Woodbine. If the 404 were never extended to where it terminates now, these roads would not be cyclable at all. I was thinking about Jane Jacobs and neighbourhoods, and how different some parts of our city would look if we had a different highway network. That's for another post though. But all I could think about is how lucky we are to have that highway because of how safe it's made everything.

A lot went through my mind. Why am I doing this? Finally I started thinking that maybe this is pretty safe after all. I was very worried before leaving. I didn't know how courteous the drivers up north would be. I expected a free-for-all. More like how things were on Highway 48. Now that I was almost back I had to see this. I wondered if I was being safe enough, or if maybe I should give in and wear one of those reflective X vests. I've been trying so hard to avoid them. When I drive and see someone wearing one I kinda giggle on the inside (sorry Tanya). ;) It really sucks.

I made it back alright. Things went well with the tailwind and even more hills going down. I even decided to ride all the way back home. Why not? It was only a few extra kilometers.

Distance: 208.5 km
Time: 7:52
Actual time: 8:52
Average speed: 26.5 km/h
Max speed: 58.6 km/h
Average HR: 134
Peak HR: 174
Time in zone 3: 3:33
Total ascent: 3077 ft

I accomplished two goals this weekend that I didn't know I was going to be able to do this year. I circumnavigated Lake Simcoe and I did a double metric century. SWEET! I'm really starting to feel like anything's possible. I haven't felt like this since I was a kid. This is awesome.

Almost forgot. Here's the route I took:



I should have made them easier to see, but the dark blue is on the way up and the light green is the return, just in case you can't tell in the post. I've also signed up for a basic account at MotionBased, where you can read all kinds of cool stats on the return trip here. I'm going to give more info on it when I've used it a bit more. It's looking pretty damn awesome so far.

I get some crazy ideas every once in a while... it's just not that often that I actually follow through with them. When I was a kid I wanted to run a mararthon, and then changed it to a run from Marathon to Athens. Why not? Or riding my bike to my grandmother's place, which is 250 km north. This time it was to ride to Ben's cottage and back.

It took a while to figure out a proper route. I found Blake's blog through Tanya's when I remembered that he took a similar route to Midland for a cottage trip. He helped a lot with my route planning, since he had the cool Golden Horseshoe Recreation map that he used to plan his route. I was originally going to go straight up Keele instead of taking Leslie, but I stuck with Blake's route, since after plugging in the various routes it was actually the same length.

The ride was actually pretty good. The route up to Brantford went as expected (where I nearly made the same mistake as Blake). It was kinda funny where I stopped in Newmarket to stock up on Powerade. The guy working in there said that a couple weeks before someone had stopped in on his way to Keswick and he was pretty impressed. I'm sure it's a common enough route, but I couldn't help but thinking how it was an echo of someone else's trip.

Riding up 10th Sideroad wasn't too bad. There wasn't as much shoulder as I would have liked, but most drivers were very respectful. I also saw a couple groups of riders coming the opposite way, so I was pretty happy about it.

After grabbing a slice of pizza in Barrie I kept going. Highway 93 wasn't quite so nice. It was very bumpy, but it was not busy enough to really bother me. I could ride a fair way out from the side of the road until it cleared up. There was a pseudo bike lane for the rest of the ride on it. It was one of those 1 1/2 - 2 1/2 foot shoulders marked with a white line. It was in pretty good shape too.

Old Barrie Rd. (Regional Highway 11) was nice too. Not too busy, very scenic... but the hills. They were a little more than I had bargained for. I climbed the biggest hill of the ride, and right at the top I had the now familiar sound of a blowout. I traced it back to a slash in the tire I thought I had cured by plugging with a piece of spare tube. I guess not. I put a bigger piece of spare tube in and kept going. I was still pretty worried about blowing out again though.

About 5k down the road I passed Hardwood Hills. I was totally not expecting that. It was just by blind luck that I happened to pass it and read the sign about their bike shop. I figured they wouldn't have a road bike tire, but maybe I could at least pick up a patch kit.

I can only imagine what the mountain bikers must have thought when I parked my road bike outside beside their bikes. The shop had a few tires, so I picked up a Vittoria Rubino Pro and threw it on. I even went inside and used their floor pump. I couldn't believe my luck. I still had a bit of a lump in the tire since the tube didn't want to fit in too well, but I made do. I had a new tire and after a kid gave me a crazy look, I was back on my way.

At the absolute highest elevation of my trip I ran into another roadie. It was pretty surreal by this point (as was everything else happening). I nearly took the road he came up on to go down, but I trusted the GPS. Ugh.

Townline Road was very nice. Hilly, but completely dead. I didn't see a car for very long periods of time. I even saw a couple locals on bikes, without hemets, going god knows where. Probably the nicest part of the ride. From there it was a short trip to Port Severn and on through the windy roads to Honey Harbour.

The funny thing was that I didn't really know what the roads would be like after Townline, but I had managed to pick the same roads that were suggested in the Recreation map. I picked up a copy when I got back. So the route was really nice and quiet. Not what I expected on a long weekend.

Distance: 174.61 km
Time: 6:49
Actual time: 7:52
Average speed: 25.6 km/h
Max speed: 73.1 km/h
Average HR: 138
Peak HR: 173
Time in zone 3: 3:42
Total ascent: 2442 ft

It was a good thing I used up all that energy on the way up, because I nearly ate enough at the cottage to make up for the ride. Seriously.

This is getting a bit long, I'll continue part 2 after.

Looking over my logs from yesterday, it looks like I had a much larger calorie deficit than I expected. 1500 instead of the average of 1000. If I would have made the ride direct and on my road bike, it's safe to assume that I would have expended 1000 calories. Now here's my question... what's the cost of the food required to power a trip like that?

If I do what I do now, and power my ride with Wendy's, that will be just a bit less than two grilled chicken combos for around $13. If I just did a Burger King combo [blech], I could probably make do with one at $6.50. If you just had plain spaghetti you would need a quarter of a package. I never look at the price though... what's a pack, like about $1.50? So it would be about 37 cents, plus hydro to boil the water, salt, and maybe a little olive oil and/or cheese to help it go down. Maybe 40-45 cents? Hrm. Looking at it that way...

Compare to a car would it be safe to say costs are around 20¢ a km? So 40k per day would cost about $8. So I guess it all depends on where you get your energy from. Riding can be much cheaper.

********************************

I think I've decided to go on an epic 300+ km ride this weekend to Ben's cottage and back. It depends on if I have to work this weekend and how early I can finish on Friday night, but things are looking up. This will definitely be a test and a half. It'll be about 200 miles round trip, but I'll have a full day of rest between since it's the long weekend. I'm a little worried about riding back with home-from-the-cottage traffic though. A few drunk drivers and a lot of people aggrivated with having to go home. It's a tough call. I think I can find some quiet roads to take.

I think it depends on what kind of support I can get from Sue and Ben. If they think they might be able to grab me on the way back if things get stupid then I think I'll do it. Otherwise, I don't think I could afford a 160 km taxi ride in this country.

I decided to take the long way in to work today on bike. Wednesday was the day I previously scheduled for riding to work, and it definitely seemed like a good idea today. It was very hot, with thunderstorms scheduled for the afternoon.

To give my back a bit of a break I took my mountain bike wearing my backpack with my computer and a couple changes of clothes. Come to think of it, maybe the backpack has a bit to do with the back pain I've been experiencing on longer rides. Before Saturday's ride I've always worn my Camelbak, and on Saturday I had no back pain. On the way home today I was actually starting to get some tiredness already. Anyway...

I took my time getting there. I figured with the mountain bike I'd be slower anyway, so why try and rush it. I wasn't prepared for how much slower it actually is! I felt like I was crawling. It helped me being in my exploratory mode though, because I did take a couple trips off-road, and it's great climbing curbs and not caring where you go. It's nice when you're not prepared for the type of road conditions you're going to expect.

I stopped by D'Ornella's to have them look at my jumping chain. It was just a stuck link, which I easily corrected in the parking lot. I bought a flashing light (can never have too many) and a seat. I asked what they had, and the guy suggested this Specialized seat because it was the most like my road bike's seat. Let me just say that the seat felt great for the 10k until I got to work, but on the way back I felt like I was sitting on bare metal. I will never buy another Specialized seat again. This is the second, and I hated both of them. On further inspection it looks like my OCR2's seat is a Selle Royale (wish I looked at that before). Yeah, almost the same...

I've never had great service from D'Ornella's. I've never had bad service there either. I've just had... service. I bought my OCR2 from there, and I took Phil to get his bike from there too. It's not like I haven't brought them business. But I get this attitude from them that I'm just not really needed. I don't know. Maybe it's just me, and I'm being picky. I don't know. The shop I started spending money in was in Newmarket. The guy there was a great salesman, and I spent a lot of money there. But as long as I knew when to say no (which didn't happen as often as it should have), I knew I was being served by someone who was genuinely excited about what he was doing. He absolutely loved it, and when he sold stuff it was because he believed in it and loved it. A true enthusiast. I'm sure the guys at D'Ornellas were the same way at some point in their lives, just not now. Maybe I'm not so different at my work.

The ride back was much more leisurely. Saturday the ride took me 45 minutes. In the morning it was an hour. The way home took an hour and a half. I tried out some of the trails and recommended bike routes that run reasonably close to my route. One was the Gaineau trail. It runs through a hydro corridor, starting halfway between Midland and Kennedy, halfway between Eglinton and Lawrence. Easy to get to, right?

The trail sucked. It started off with a big walk up the stairs to get over the SRT and rail lines. I got to witness a fight between a couple which took place half on / half off the stairs. On the other side it went through a park which had four basketball half-courts set up. It was pretty cool to see everyone out playing. The trail continued down to Victoria Park, but it meandered a little too much. Then there were no crosswalks to get across the major streets, so I was left to my own wits to get across. Not cool (not because I don't have wits).

At the end there were some people playing cricket and others playing soccer. The cricket game looked a little pre-planned with equipment and stuff, but with the soccer game it looks like people just showed up. Maybe they do it regularly during the summer. I've never thought how things like that just happen. The trail ended abruptly and I made my way down O'Connor to give it a shot.

The trail was pointless. It isn't direct or safe enough to be a decent trail for commuters, and it's not pretty enough for people who live in the area to walk and enjoy. We had a trail like it in my part of Scarborough that nobody used either. It was in the Finch hydro corridor, and it suffered from the same problems. Maybe if they would have extended this trail on both ends it would have made much more sense. If it went straight to Thompson park in the east that would have made a nice connection to the Brimorton bike path. If the western part could be extended to even Eglinton it would have helped too. But now it's a bastard trail.

I grabbed some batteries for my new light and rode down O'Connor. I had no idea how bad of a street it is to ride down. No wonder the Cosburn bike path was needed so badly. Cars were coming pretty close to me, but they had no where else to go. Not nice at all.

I noticed a few more people honk around me. I still don't know if they're honking at me or not. I assume they are, but every time I look at them they don't make eye contact with me. Are they really honking at me? Because if they are I'm going to cuss them a new hole (for some reason I get violently defensive when I'm riding, must be "little man's disease").

I've been waiting a few days for it to stabilize, but it looks like I've hit another five-pound milestone at 175. This is a pretty good day for me. Like the last time, I pulled a horrible picture out of the vault. I think I'm going to make this a regular thing. No super fun Photochop job on this one, but I've already got some ideas for the next. I just don't have any good current (meaning this month) pictures yet.



The one on the left was from December. It's the worst picture of me. Period. Way too much scotch, way too much money lost, way too little sleep, and wow, I look really bad. I was somewhere just north of 200. The right pic was from today, trying out my new phone.

I was looking back at how my weight increased over the years, paying attention to what I was eating at the time and my level of exercise. Just a rough idea, but it will definitely help guide me better once I get closer to my goal.

1990-1991
Weight: 120-125 pounds
Activity level: 5k bike ride a day
Typical food day: bowl of cereal, juice, McChicken combo, boiled chicken leg and rice.
Rough calorie intake: 1700

1992-1993
Weight: 130-160
Activity level: 15 minutes of medium level activity per day
Typical food day: two or three cheese pastries, Coke, beef patty or panzerotti, Coke, Whopper combo, Coke.
Rough calorie intake: 2600

1994-2001
Weight: 165-195
Activity level: nearly none
Typical food day: Iced Cappuccino, bagel, Wendy's combo, Coke, spaghetti, meat sauce, Coke.
Rough calorie intake: 2400

2002-2005
Weight: 190-200
Activity level: some cycling
Typical food day: no breakfast, souvlaki on a pita, fries, Coke, slice of pizza, 7-Up.
Rough calorie intake: 2000-2400

2006
Weight: 205-175
Activity level: 4-8 hours cardio per week
Typical food day: cereal, water, chicken teriyaki, diet drink, nuts, spaghetti, Perrier.
Rough calorie intake: 2000

Brutal. Right now I'm back at the weight I was in 1996. Not bad, but at that time I was definitely ramping things up. The cool thing is I've erased ten years of crap! Not bad for a few months work.

Looking at this, I'm very glad that I've made my goal to be somewhere around 140-145. I was happiest around then, and it was a good balance between the toothpick I was before that and the not-quite-so-toothpicky guy I was after. I didn't get to enjoy it for very long though... it was a fast trip up there.

There's no way I'd like to be eating only 1700 calories a day. That's ridiculous for me. I'm sure I could maintain being that size if I continued at my current pace, but I don't want to do that. I think it will be fairly easy for things to get back to normal once I hit my target. I have no desire to eat like I used to anymore. I wouldn't mind adding a few things back into my diet though. Everything within reason. I don't think I'll need to log everything, since I'll still have a good idea of what I'm eating. It's a lifestyle change. I'm glad I've made it.

Can't wait for the next five pounds in review...