Hittin’ It hard

Are you kidding me? I just start to feel vaguely like I might be working myself up to some level of fitness and endurance and riding at least three times a week and that a minimum of 100 miles a month is a good goal for now and … and … then my dear wife and I go away for a long (much needed) weekend. The normally mild (boring) April weather turns blast-furnace hot and nasty for days on end, and I’m supposed to leave town again this weekend and won’t be able to ride for another three days of the week and pretty much all of my forward momentum – pun intended – to cycle on a consistent basis has hit a big ol’ brick wall.

So now the battle will be to not let one week with only one ride (last week) turn into this week with no rides, and another week, and another week, and then I’m right back at square one.

I remember reading once how long an athlete (now, that’s funny!) can go without training/working out before his/her muscles and stamina are back to the way they were before training began. I think it was something like 3 weeks max away from training before you’re starting all over again. I’m sure it’s quicker the older you get. With me, it feels like it must be about 3 days. But as I said in the last post, that problem is mostly in my noggin’.

And so, today is supposed to be yet another 100 degree scorcher (I love L.A.—not) and I somehow seriously doubt my wife and son will feel too much like suiting up in black spandex and sweating our collective brains out, gasping for lungs-full of superheated L.A. basin air with its inversion layer soup of toxins and pollutants, rolling our skinny bike tires over taffy-soft blacktop that radiates the sun’s heat back up at you in shimmering thermal waves. Care to join me?

And so another day will pass unridden. I guess it’s days and weeks like these for which they invented indoor trainers. I just can’t help but think that – after investing hundreds of $$s in a trainer, it would only sit unused and collecting dust and clothes hangers just like the majority of treadmills and rowing machines sitting unused in bedrooms and basements around the world.

Thankfully, tomorrow is another day and the crack weather forecasters on TV (weather forecasters on crack?) are predicting that our daytime highs will drop nearly 20 degrees. I sure hope so. I’ve got a lot of time in the saddle to make up in order to ride around the brick wall that’s in front of me.

Ride on.

The 3 most dangerous pounds

I’ll be the first to acknowledge that I’m in lousy shape (and yes, ladies and germs, round is a shape ... rimshot! ) Granted, I don’t know many guys my age and weight who can ride a bike 10 or 15 miles or more and not end up writhing in agony on the pavement, clutching my chest with both hands and doing my best Redd Foxx/Fred Sanford impersonation.

So, I’ve got THAT going for me at least. But on my ride late yesterday afternoon, somewhere around mile 6 or 7, I realized that my biggest obstacle was my own head. That old saw about “mind over matter” is really true when the matter is feeling like your legs just can’t push the pedals down and around one more time, and your lungs want to explode in your chest and then some skinny-minny-clown with lead weights in his back jersey pocket so he won’t get blown around by the breeze whizzes past like you’re standing still and disappears around the corner as your vision begins to gray-out and an annoyingly shrill whistle starts sounding in your ears and you can’t feel your fingers on the handlebars and your mph numbers on your cycle-computer steadily drop from 16 to 13 to 10.3 (I’m going uphill, okay?) and all you really want to do is stop, get off your bike, do a two-handed heave of the thing into the scum-lined cement trough of the nearby Arroyo Seco waterway, sit on the ground and cry until some good Samaritan comes along driving a mobile-masseuse-on-wheels-van and helps you inside to make all the pain and heartache go away.

Where was I? Oh yeah … I was not having a good ride. Especially when a couple of former riding friends (from a few years and a hundred pounds ago) found me huffing and puffing and just barely surviving and decided to ride alongside and grill me for miles about how often I was riding and how many miles was I going to do and why don’t I do more than that and is this how slow I normally ride and … you get the idea. The next accessory going into my tool pouch is a 9mm Beretta.

All that is to say, I’ve learned that you can ride the same route, the same number of miles and one day it will be uplifting and energizing and fill your soul with great hope for a physically fit and mentally enlightened future. And the next day (like yesterday) the very same distance and route can just kick your existential butt and make you want to post your bike on Craigslist as soon as you drag your sorry self home. It’s all a matter of what’s going on up there in that attitude manipulating brain. Call it the “inner game of cycling” if you will. Sure, I have no doubt that, if and when I shed a whole bunch of this extra weight I’m carrying around, I’ll always have those three-some-odd lbs. inside my skull that will play a huge role in how much I do or don’t enjoy any given ride.

In other words, like many other sports, cycling isn’t only about endurance and strength or aching feet or near lethal saddle sores – there’s also a whole lot of it that’s simply all in your head. Ride on.

At least my tires are skinny

I need to fess up. I’m a roadie snob. Can’t help it. Having ridden both mountain bikes and road bikes over the past many years, I’m a certified, carbon-fibered, speed-loving, asphalt-riding roadie, through and through.

Maybe it’s because mountain bikes are typically ridden over – duh – mountainous, hilly, rough, steep, rocky terrain. You know, the kind of ground that can wreak serious havoc on over-the-hill bodies like mine. Oh sure, hitting the hard pavement doing 30 to 35 mph is no walk in the park, either. In fact, a good road-riding friend of mine (several years older than moi, I might add) had a close encounter with the highway a few years back. He doesn’t remember what made him fall, but he woke up in an ambulance on the way to the hospital with a badly broken collar bone that required many months of recuperation and physical therapy to heal. To this day, he can’t raise his arms above shoulder height without pain.

But at least most asphalt or pavement is relatively flat – as opposed to dirt trails with sharp, jagged rocks, sharp pokey branches and life-threatening drop offs – to name just a few of the hazards. On the road, you only have to worry about tires blowing out at high speed, cars, broken glass, cars, pedestrians crossing in front of you, dogs, cars, squirrels (don’t ask), wheels that taco on sharp corners and (did I mention?), cars.

Okay, so maybe road bikes aren’t that much safer (and maybe even worse) than mountain bikes. But there’s just something cool about being able to cover so much distance on two wheels under your own power. And as futile as trying to ride a skinny tired, rigid-framed road bike on a dirt trail would be, it’s also kinda goofy to see guys on their mountain bikes huffing and puffing along an asphalt road – much of their energy being used up and wasted bouncing up and down on their bike’s spongy suspension, along with the rolling resistance of fat, knobby tires against hard pavement.

I must say, it’s a small victory when I’m able to ride right past some younger, in shape guy and leave him in my substantial turbulence (think Boeing 747 passing a hang glider at 30,000 feet), even though I know perfectly well that my speed is only due to the type of bike I’m riding. For a fleeting moment, I can pretend to know what Lance feels like blowing past Carlos Sastre on the Alpe d’Huez.

Of course, any serious road biker could clean my corpulent clock even if they rode a Huffy tricycle. But I can dream.

Here’s another plus to riding road bikes over mountain bikes: when you break down on a road bike, there’s a good chance you can call a friend to come pick you up in their car and be back home nursing a cold one in the time it takes a mountain biker to stumble the first mile back down the trail carrying his bike on his shoulder.

Mountain bikes? Only about 30 pounds psi in the tires. Like a kiddy bike. Road bikes roll on an impressive 110 pounds psi. Pump that! I’m talkin’ serious air pressure, dude.
Oh, and one last reason to look down my sweat-dripping nose at people of the mountain bike persuasion is that these poor souls don’t get the pleasure of wearing clown-colored, tight fitting jerseys that zip up the front like an ultra-cool dentist’s smock along with body-hugging lycra pants that … well, that are ridiculously tight. You’d ride away real fast, too, if you were wearing a getup like that. Ride on.

Left Behind

Several years ago, I weighed almost 100 pounds less than I do today, spent many hours each week on my bike racking up the miles, and would sign up for a half-century (50 mile) bike ride every now and then without giving it a second thought. My dear wife and I would enjoy training rides in the morning after the kids went to school, or on the occasional Saturday morning in which we would ride for ten, fifteen, twenty miles or more – much of that time side by side, talking about a myriad of subjects, or not at all, just listening to the sound of the road and of each others’ breathing and shifting of gears.

As the stronger rider of our duo, and prone to becoming lost in my own random thoughts, I would at times suddenly realize that I had pulled away from Diana and would look back over my shoulder to see her hundreds of yards or even farther behind. I would usually slow down so she could catch up, or – if the distance was too great – turn around and ride back to where she was.

For several reasons which I will write about in upcoming posts, we stopped riding almost entirely — other than the occasional hop back on the bikes every few months to see if we remembered how to do it on particularly gorgeous, mild days.

As a result of this lack of riding, and the return of my many extra pounds, lots of things have changed on our rides. Not only are our rides being considerably shorter than they used to be, but my wife is now the one out in front on any given ride. If it’s a downhill stretch of road, yowza – I’m out in front like John Candy on a greased bobsled. But let the road turn into even the slightest incline and I start to drop back like I’m riding with flat tires through wet concrete.

Short of shoving a rocket pack up my hiney, there’s just no way I’ll ever even ride alongside my pedal-pushing honey, much less pass her up. Those days – for all intents and purposes – are gone. At least for now. Sometimes it really gets me down – like our ride last night. Between our son’s Lance-like speed and endurance, my wife’s strength and stamina, and my lack of endurance and inability to take deep enough breaths due to a certain rather roundish mid-section between my lungs and madly pumping knees – I may as well have been all by myself the entire ride. Whoopee.

My hope (and one of several goals) is to realize at some point in the not too distant future that I’m riding up the west side of the Rose Bowl loop right alongside my wife, maybe even chatting her up, and I know I’ve got some juice still left in the tank if I wanted to blow past her in a manly, dominant Alpha male sorta way. Not that I would, of course.

Then again, as soon as that happens, I know without a doubt that Diana will catch me at the next water break and say, “Hey … it’s no fun riding by myself, y’know!?!” I live for that day.

Oh, and for anyone keeping score – as of last night, I have been on my bike ten times for a grand total of 100 miles since my “restart” during the last week of February. It ain’t much, I know. Hopefully before too long, I’ll be able to look at numbers like those and laugh what’s left of my butt off like most of you are probably doing right now. Until then, it’s a start.

Flat out frustrating

So, no sooner am I all pumped up, committed to success and ready to chew up the miles, but I get sidetracked by as stupid and inconsequential a thing as air. Simple old air. You might think that any “air” problems with a guy of my stature (think of an ‘Oompa-Loompa’ in tight, stretchy bike pants) would involve simply catching my breath. As true as that might be all too often, yesterday’s trouble strictly involved keeping a tire inflated.

And it wasn’t even my own! Nope. Here’s what happened: my youngest son, wife and I were getting our bikes and gear (shoes, helmets, gloves, etc.) ready to ride at our usual weekday riding spot, the Rose Bowl in nearby Pasadena. One part of the pre-ride routine is making sure the air in our tires is at 110 psi. Now, if you’ve ever paid attention to the air pressure in your car’s tires, you know that 30 – 35 psi is pretty normal. But for all of you out there not into the sport of shoving a rock-hard, wafer-thin bike seat between your butt cheeks and hunching over hard metal handlebars shaped like ram’s horns for miles on end – road bikes have skinny little tires, with even skinnier little inner tubes inside them. In order for these tiny tires to hold the weight of a rider, the air pressure inside has to be fierce.

When a road bike tire goes flat, it usually happens all at once. One second you’re rolling along at speeds up to 35 or 40 miles an hour, and the next, you’re riding on a metal rim. Not a nice thing to have happen to you. Trust me.

All that is to say that we always check our tire pressure before a ride. So, my son notices that his rear tire feels soft. He attaches the head of our super-high-tech (and expensive – all accessories for cycles are expensive) bicycle pump to the valve on the tire, and – PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS --- all the air left in the tire immediately begins to vent out. Turns out the rubber tube where the valve is attached was cracked from fatigue. I know the feeling.

So, before we can load our bikes into my truck and head over to the Rose Bowl for an early evening ride, young son must have lesson in tire repair. Good son. Watch closely son as Dad shows you how to remove the wheel from its greasy home on the back of your bike, take out the inner tube, take a new inner tube from that funny little cordura bag that is strapped under your bike’s seat, reinstall the new tube, put the tire back on the rim – being extremely careful not to pinch the new tube as you do it, reinflate the tire and put the wheel assembly back into place, ready to ride.

See how easy that was? Huh? What noise? Hang on … let me listen. PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. Are you kidding me? Where the **#!!**$#^!!! is it leaking? It’s a brand new tube!

Turns out, “new” is a relative term in the world of cycling. The spare tube that was new at one time, had been languishing in the bag under my son’s seat for over a year and a half at least. Apparently, tubes go bad. Who knew?

And so, the entire process was repeated with great enthusiasm (or at least significant commentary on my part) and off we went. Upon arriving at our usual starting point in one of the many parking lots at the world-famous Rose Bowl, we unloaded our bikes, slipped into our biking shoes with the clippy-cloppy cleats on the bottom, strapped on our helmets, adjusted our sunglasses, picked appropriate playlists on our iPods, zeroed out our bike odometers, and …
PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

Seriously? Again? Ah c’mon!! Well, I won’t repeat the sequence of events that followed since by now, even my son could do it in his sleep. My wife went ahead and began her circuit of 3.2 mile laps around the stadium complex and nearby golf course, while my son and I stayed at the truck, replaced yet another bad tube all the while painfully aware that the sun was rapidly disappearing behind the many McMansions on the surrounding hills.

By the time my son’s bike was fully operational enough to set him free to go and catch up with his mother (the boy is an incredibly strong and fast rider), I have to admit that I was less than motivated to ride. My former enthusiasm and adrenalin had dissipated as fast as the air in my son’s inner tubes.

Being at the Bowl, however, dressed in my silly bike cloths, my wife and son already pedaling away, I figured any ride at all would be better than no exercise and who knows, maybe I could even ride away from some of my stress and frustration.

And you know what? I did. I only logged another 6 miles before the darkness and hordes of just-off-work walkers, joggers, cyclists, dog-walkers and inline skaters convinced the three of us to call it a day.

Ready to ride

So, here we go.

Introductions are in order. I’m a suddenly middle-aged west-coast suburbanite, with a wonderful wife, four exceptional kids and three absolutely perfect grandkids, so far. But that’s not the important stuff – at least as far as this new blog is concerned.

I’m also a big guy. At 5-foot, 9-inches of verticalness, some would say I’m average height (just ask me). My wife and kids say I’m short. Eye of the beholder, people, eye of the beholder. At my height and weight, the actuary tables would likely say I should already be dead. I’ll put it this way, when I open the front door, life insurance salesmen run away. Screaming.

Simply put, I weigh too much. Scratch that. I’m fat. As in obese. A real porker. A corpulent fellow. A heavy hitter. Jumbo-sized, that’s me.

How heavy am I? Too. In all honesty, I’m not ready to post my current weight for all the world and my mother to see. Let’s just say I weigh way too much. Dangerously much. They don’t call it “morbid” for nothing, folks.

I will eventually – soon, I’m sure -- post a picture or two of me in glorious spandex garb (you have been warned) and you’ll be able to see how far I have to travel down my weight loss road.

I’m not just a big guy, all too often I’m a “Big Guy” – a term I absolutely HATE when friends, clients or random strangers use it to address me. I’m sure they think it’s cute and cuddly. I think it’s only slightly less painful than listening to an angry cat trapped in a box made of chalkboard walls. Because I know what they don’t dare say instead – “Hey FATSO!” or “Whas’up lard butt?” Or worse.

I used to work in the creative department of a big honkin’ ad agency on Wilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles. The head honcho of the agency would always greet me in the elevator with a hearty, “Jim! How ‘ya doin’ BIG GUY?!?” Of course, it didn’t help that he was a tall, scrawny, bean pole of a man who I’m sure had to draw a permanent marker line on his belly so he wouldn’t pull his pants up too high every morning. And yet, I’d always see him pound down twice the lunch I ever ate when with him. No one said life was fair.

Anyway, Mr. Insensitive would give me that stupid greeting every day, I’d grit my teeth, put on the best phony-sincere smile I could manage, and somehow avoid pushing him down an open elevator shaft. Some days I came close.

Where was I? Oh, yeah -- I hope to use this blog to chronicle my efforts to – for the umpteenth time – lose a ton (or slightly less) of weight, regain my health and energy (and youthful good looks, of course) and relieve some of the constant and unbelievable stress that is a daily result of being a self-employed freelance writer in an economy that – for all intents and purposes – bites wind.

Rather than go on another crazy, mind-numbing, super-costly and dangerously restrictive diet (more about those in a later post), I have committed to doing something wildly simple – ride a bike. A lot.

I’ll be paying close attention to what I eat, when I eat and how much I eat as well. I’d be an idiot not to. But, in the wisdom of so many who’ve gone before me, I know that it’s the old “calories in, calories out” battle that I have to wage.

I actually re-started my biking last month and am already beyond the initial saddle sore, I’ll-never-be-able-to-sit-down-on-anything-ever-again stage. Thank you, Lord. Starting out, I rode a whopping 31 miles in three rides towards the end of last month. So far in March, I’ve already ridden five times for a total of 52 miles.

I’ll wait for the “oohs” and “aahs” to die down. Hopefully, those numbers will be laughable before too long. (Yeah, yeah. I hear some of you laughing already.)

In coming posts, I hope to have lots to say (sorry) about where I ride, what kind of bike I torture with each and every mile, the trials and troubles of being a Rubenesque rider in a world of anorexic-ly thin riders, the agony of road bike saddles, and much, much more.

As I ride the streets of L.A. County, I often pass other plus-size cyclists (“Look honey … there’s one like me!!”) and am tempted to flag them down to ask where they found a jersey that fits, how they keep their featherweight wheelsets from taco-ing every other week, and other issues that “normal” weight riders never have to think about. Maybe this blog can become an online meeting place where porky peddlers like us can swap favorite routes, equipment sources, and fashion tips (!!) Or at least a place to encourage each other.

I think you’ll find that my writing alternates frequently between tears-of-a-clown humor, self-deprecation, painful transparency and a wide (pun) range of other emotions.
Hang on. It should be quite a ride.