A new love, and a new money sink

My brother's company's CEO owns a really sweet condo up in the mountains of Colorado. And the CEO is so awesome that he lets other higher-ups in the company use it when he's not up there himself. And those higher-ups are equally awesome in gifting the condo to their employees for special occasions, such as my brother's 30th birthday. And my brother can't possibly enjoy his time in a 3-story condo by himself so he decided to invite all his friends.

So in short, we got to spend the weekend at a pretty sweet condo nestled between the slopes of a ski resort and a river, complete with entertainment center, board room, and outdoor hot-tub. Hell of a place to play Sardines, I tell you!

Although the condo was amazing, it's not supposed to be the entire point of the story. The main reason I'm writing about it is that it got me into mountain biking. Like, for real. My brother and all his friends are huge mountain bikers and I'd never really understood what was so special about it. But then again, I never understood road cycling either and now I'm hooked, so I guess it all takes time. Whenever they said they were going on a mountain bike ride, I always passed and told them I'd meet up for the BBQ and beer later when they got back.

This time, though, the only other option was hiking and I. Absolutely. Hate. Hiking. Have I made myself clear enough? It's like walking, which I'm also not a huge fan of, but uphill and slower. Biking, on the other hand, actually gets you places in a reasonably quick amount of time, so I'm willing to put some sweat into it. Walking and hiking, on the other hand, not so much.

(Speaking of slow activities, this whole getting somewhere very slowly with a large amount of effort is probably why I hate running. It's so unpleasant and I get nowhere slow. Eww.)

Anywhos, I borrowed a mountain bike and then agreed to go on the trail everyone else was going on. Somewhat of a big mistake. We spent the first 4 miles or so going straight uphill, and then finally got to enjoy the next 3 miles of straight downhill:

I had to change the settings on my GPS watch to auto-pause at 0 mph instead of the preset 4 mph because, as you can tell, my watch was paused for the first 1,000 feet of climbing. Yeah, I was going less than 4 mph for most of the uphill. I would've been better off walking, probably. Uphill. With my bike.

Me on the ridge after 3 miles of uphill...my first mountain bike experience ever.

Even though the uphill thoroughly kicked my butt and I hated some portions of it, it was really satisfying to bike up a freaking mountain! The views were spectacular throughout and it was so much fun weaving between trees and biking over and around rocks and logs. Apparently I didn't slow the group down too much, since they didn't have to wait all that long at the top. And I beat my brother's girlfriend going downhill, not only in speed but also in guts.

Red cliffs looking the other way.

So yeah, it was an absolutely awesome weekend and now I'm in the market for a mountain bike. Yet another expensive hobby to drain my already sad-looking bank account.

The group at the top.

Notice the thunderstorms in the background of the pictures that we narrowly escaped. Metal bikes on the ridge + lightning = the fastest ride down ever.

Bike gear ratios

On my triathlon support group someone asked about gear ratios and I wrote out this whole thing for him explaining how to calculate them. Since I'm afraid I'm going to lose my original chart and/or forget how to do it in the future, I'm going to post a copy here. This site may soon become a place I list nuggets of triathlon advice in addition to chronicling my weight-loss journey. Hopefully one doesn't take over the other.

George,

That gearing website is over my head as well but I once took a gear class/talk/thingamabob and they greatly simplified the whole thing for newbies like me. Essentially the guy taught us how to rank our gears from lowest to highest, across all three chainrings/cranks/cassettes/whatever they're called (the name escapes me now). Out of the 30 gears I have on my bike (3 in front x 10 in back) I was able to rank them in order and can now shift more smoothly in that I don't skip gears when shifting going uphill and get less tired overall.

Here's how...it involves a lot of counting the cogs on each ring, so beware. Unless you're a good Googler, that is.

1. Figure out how many cogs are on each of your rings, both front and back. Usually for the front that's given in the specs for the bike (mine's 50/39/30) and for the back they give you a range (mine's 12-27, 10 speed). You can either Google that particular cassette/rear gear rings by getting the name and range off the specs website for your bike or get on your hands and knees and count them all. I recommend the latter, but I know it's not always possible. Oftentimes you can also guesstimate the spacing between the gears in the back. Steve is much better at that than I am.
2. For each gear, divide the number of cogs from the front gear by the number of cogs on the back gear, and multiply the whole thing by wheel size. For the purposes of ranking your gears relative to each other, you don't have to multiply by the wheel size, since the order of gears comes out the same regardless. I still multiplied since it gave larger numbers and was easier to compare and rank them later. For example, for my fastest overall gear (largest front gear, smallest back gear) and what I thought were 26" wheels at the time, I did the following: 26*50/12 = 108 and do that for all your other gears as well. You don't have to convert your wheel size to metric. Or you can multiply by some random number to take care of the decimals. The important part is divide the front gear by the rear gear.
3. Remove two gears with smallest front/smallest back and smallest front/2nd smallest back, and two gears with largest front/largest back and largest front/2nd largest back from your chart, for a total of four gears removed. You should never be riding in those gears since in those combinations, the chain is diagonal across the gear rings which is not good for either or the chain and grates on the components. So avoid at all costs.
   
4. Rank your resulting numbers from highest to lowest, with the lower numbers being lowest/slowest gears (granny gears) and higher numbers being highest/fastest gears (downhills). So the granny gears (smallest front, largest back) would have low numbers and the gears for downhills (largest front, smallest back) would have super high numbers.
5. Write it all out on a piece of paper and tape it to your handlebars. It really helps on the uphills especially with knowing into which gear you should downshift so as not to skip gears. Makes the climb smoother and more effective, in my opinion.

Below is my gear chart. The multicolored chart and numbers are the result of the formula I mentioned in #2 above: wheel size*front gear cogs/rear gear cogs. And the bottom chart is the ranking of the gears from slowest to fastest (granny gears to downhill gears). As you can see, I've crossed out the four gears I mentioned in #3 that you should never use and didn't include them in my rankings.

The numbers for the front and rear gears correspond to the number of cogs on each ring.

I've taped a little index card with the bottom chart info on my handlebars and try to shift in order. It's especially useful on uphills when I feel like I'm shifting too quickly or the one I'm in is just a tad too hard so I downshift and all is well. It's taken a little getting used to in figuring out what gear I'm actually in to be able to see where to go next, and I still find myself looking back at my rear derailleur quite often.

So during normal flats or rolling hills I don't really stick with the gear chart too much and just do it by feel, and don't really care if I'm a little bit off. As you can see in the middle gears of the middle chainring, the numbers aren't that different (first chart) and thus changing gears from say a gear combo of 39/17 to 50/21 (ranking 13 to 14) is about the same as from 39/17 to 39/16 (ranking 13 to 15). Here is where having an accurate wheel size comes in handy because you can see that 13 to 14 is 60 to 62 (not sure about the units...inches, maybe?) and 13 to 15 is 60 to 63, so only a difference of 1 inch between the two results, but you're going from 13 to 15 in just one gear change as compared to 3 for 13 to 14. So in those middle gears sometimes it's not important to go in order since the differences are slight and you can skip a ranking without feeling too much of a difference in order to shift less frequently.

Once you get to the granny gears or downhill gears, the differences are much more noticeable. Going from ranking 3 to 2 (30/21 to 30/24) is 37 inches to 33 inches, while ranking 3 to 1 (30/21 to 30/27) is 37 inches to 29 inches, a much bigger jump and thus a gear you probably don't want to skip.

Also, on the uphills it's easier to know which gear I'm in since the terrain is not changing as often and thus I'm in the same gear for a longer amount of time, but also because the differences between the gear combos are so great that I can generally feel where I am on the cassette. Overall, this has been really helpful in getting myself to ride in the proper gear and thus making my riding more efficient and smoother. I would highly recommend making a chart of your own.

Nifty little calorie cycling site

I've always wondered where people get their calorie cycling numbers, and now I've found it!

Here is not only a calorie calculator, showing your daily needs depending on activity level, but also giving some insight into what you should be eating and when with regards to calorie cycling.

My results are as follows:

And as you can see from the very bottom of the image, you can also calculate macro nutrient ratios (carbs, protein, fat) depending on you daily calorie intake.

Here's a snapshot of that:

Pretty nifty site. I don't really need the daily calorie thing since I have a GoWear Fit that tells me exactly how many calories I burn a day. But it's really nice to see how I should be calorie cycling for those inevitable plateau weeks. And the macro nutrient breakdown is really interesting.

Feeling discouraged yet again

I just got a text from The Roommie and it's somewhat disheartening:
"This is the most awkward proctor's night. The coaches are talking about recruiting another loose head and none of the team is talking to me. :("

Let me translate. Proctor's is a dive bar next to our practice field, and loose head is the position both I and The Roommie play. I actually only started playing loosehead about a month ago because my usual position is now occupied by one of the coach's favorites. Well, that's not entirely why she's starting all the time, because she is fairly good. But the fact that she's known the coach for eight years and moved out here to play for her sure doesn't help the situation.

Anywhos, I'm discouraged by that text because it's sad to hear you suck. Like, really suck. It's also another confirmation that I'm a huge outsider on this team, as if trying to hang out and talk to people but getting ignored instead wasn't indication enough. But that's a story for another day.

So I feel as if my plan to get super fit and super strong for the upcoming season is not going to be enough to get a starting position. At all. I just feel like all this is hopeless and I should just quit and wallow in my misery like I have been doing for years now.

But then I have to remember that this summer's plans are not just for rugby. Getting fit is not just for rugby. I've wanted to be thinner way before I started playing this sport so my goals shouldn't change just because there's a small kink in my plan for world domination. Well, at least on the rugby pitch.

And even if I'm not a starter on a super awesome team, I will still be thinner and fitter and (hopefully) happier. That, and I can't predict how good I'll be 50 pounds lighter. I mean, I was an All American (Second Team, but All American nonethess) when I wasn't exactly "thin" for my height. So who knows what will happen when I'm actually fit?

Blast from the past: 165+ pounds of awesomeness.

My whole goal for this summer was to come back in August and have everyone say, "Wow." I want to blow their minds by my hard work during our off-season. I want to show them what kind of rugby player I can be when I don't have all those extra pounds of padding weighing me down.

So let that be my motivation. Regardless if I make the starting side or not, I want to know that the only reason I didn't is because my skills aren't as good as someone else's, and not because my weight is slowing me down. I want to realize my full potential. Is that too much to ask?

Summer plans

It's that time of year when I get super excited about it getting warm and all the fun things I can't wait to do during the summer. These thoughts happen every year, and every year I fail to make them happen. So this year I'm going to do things differently and set specific numerical goals to make sure I do all the things I want to do but have put off doing because I'm too damn lazy. (I'm a fan of lists, if you haven't noticed.)

Here goes nothing:

• Go camping once a month.
• Take a bike ride once a week.
• Do a crazy hill ride twice a month.
• Have people over or go to someone's house to grill twice a month.
• Crew in a regatta once a month.

Mountains can be beautiful.

Some of these goals are social and others are things I've been wanting to do for a while. I keep complaining that I hate Colorado and living so far from a large body of water is torture, but I need to stop moping and make the best of living in this beautiful state. I really do enjoy it and can see myself becoming a mountain convert. That may be a stretch, but you never know. Regardless, I'm stuck here for a couple more years at least so I better start liking it sooner rather than later. I mean, I did spend most of my childhood backpacking with my parents and the view upon going over a pass is breathtaking. But c'mon, being one with sun and sea is pretty awesome too.

But nothing can beat this.

And, what inspired this post, you ask? Well, The Roommie is buying a road bike and thus I decided I needed some new cycling jerseys. Natural progression, right? So I've gotten bit by the cycling bug (from the comfort of my couch, of course) and got super excited about getting out on the road on my bike. And to make this excitement a reality, I needed some tangible but reasonable goals to work towards. Hence the list.

No more lettuce!

We (The Roommie and I) have been getting organic food delivered to us for about 3 months now, and you can tell it's not yet growing season. Most of the stuff we get is fruit from the tropics (mangoes, bananas, oranges) with a few hardy vegetables thrown in for good measure (squashes, root vegetables, cucumbers). Lately, though, we've been getting tons and tons of lettuce. Like, a bunch of it every week. And we are not good lettuce eaters. In fact, I hate lettuce, with a very deep passion. It has no taste, it takes up a lot of room in a bowl, and I feel like it's too much work to make it worth my while.

I know, I know. You're going to say that lettuce is the key ingredient in salads and I should be eating more green things anyway. But I refuse to make lettuce my green thing to eat. But I also hate letting food spoil so since we keep forgetting to switch out the lettuce for something else that would be much more delicious, we're stuck with eating four heads of lettuce before they go bad.

The Roommie hates letting things spoil more than I do, and so she's made it her mission to finish this batch of lettuce before it turns slimy. Her idea: cut all of it up and set it out on the table in plain view. Oh, and force it down my throat (just kidding about that last one!).

A crockpot of lettuce.

At one point last night, we had two massive mixing bowls of lettuce sitting on the counter, waiting to be eaten. But then we went out, imbibed (a lot), and got the drunken munchies. Only this time, we ate lettuce instead of chips. No joke. We killed one mixing bowl (about two heads of lettuce) between the three of us that were home. Wowsers! If these are my drunken munchies, then the only calories I have to worry about when going out for drinks is the beer. No more self-control issues when under the influence. Sweet.

I do have to say, I kind of like The Roommie's idea. Ever since she cut up the lettuce, I've been munching on it like it's chips. And I've had salad two days in a row now, which is highly abnormal. That may be due to the delicious raspberry balsamic vinegar she also bought, but whatever. Moral of the story is that her lettuce experiment has been a success! If only we could find a similar way to get everything else in our fridge eaten...

A blessing in disguise

My car has been having huge problems lately and thus I've had to go to the shop 3 times in the last week. Most notably, it was there all weekend and I was carless for a large amount of time (my fault for not picking it up...it was actually ready Friday at noon but Happy Hour, reading, and general lounging took priority over getting it back).

Anywhos, the point of this post isn't to complain that my car is a P.O.S., which it isn't. It's held up pretty well and there's actually not that much wrong with it now that the problem's been properly diagnosed.

The real reason that I'm writing about car troubles is that it's made me get off my butt and bike to school/work. I mean, I don't live that far from campus. In fact, it's a little over 1.5 miles from my front door to my first class. It's even closer to my office (1.3 miles). I should be biking every day, right?

Well, there's a small problem with this commute. There's a MASSIVE hill at about mile 1.

See? Totally flat at the beginning, then a 7% grade at mile one. If you don't get the idea, here's a little close-up:

I wouldn't mind it too much under regular bike-riding circumstances. (That's a lie. I'd be cursing the whole way up.) But my commuter bike weighs about 30 pounds (no joke, I actually weighed it) and I end up showing up to class with sweat stains up and down my back, and under my boobs and armpits. Not sexy. Gross, in fact. I even thought about buying a new t-shirt at the bookstore yesterday because I was so embarrassed.

Anywhos, another big problem I have is that it just hurts so bad to get up that thing. My quads burn, my lungs ache, and generally, it's just a miserable experience. Last time I pushed myself hard up that hill (and by "hard" I mean I pedaled just hard enough to not stand in place), it hurt to breathe for 2 hours afterward. So yeah, not my happy place.

But with my car in the shop and me not wanting to leave my house 40 minutes early to catch the bus when it takes less than half of that to bike, I was left with no choice but to try biking again. I used to be too embarrassed to even think about walking my bike up that hill (confidence issues, you know) so I suffered pedaling up that damn hill. But now I don't care. It's the only way I can get myself to consistently bike to work/school instead of driving and paying an arm and a leg for parking and gas. And this way, I can stay on campus as long as I want/need without worrying that I've exceeded my maximum parking time. And burn some calories on a daily basis. So many positives!

So yeah, the car problems have been a great blessing in disguise. It was perfect timing for me to have to take it to the shop because it's finally warming up consistently (if you ignore the snow storm we got yesterday) and thus it doesn't hurt nearly as much to bike everywhere. I even biked to get dinner the other day, instead of taking the car. Granted, I should've cooked something at home instead of buying 740 calories of Panera Bread, but little steps, little steps.

Getting it out of my system

It seems like I'm a once-a-week writer nowadays. That's ok with me for now since I've been swamped with work and school and rugby, but I've noticed that the more I write, the more involved/dedicated I am to weight-loss and thus I lose better. And since I haven't been posting much lately, that probably means I've been slacking with exercise and eating well. And that is very correct.

Acutally, I've been really disgusted with myself lately, mostly because instead of doing something about my weight and unfittedness (I totally just made up a word), I've been wallowing. And wallowing is not the way to go. The only way this weight will come off is if I work at it. I'm not going to one day wake up and be skinny. It's going to take a lot of sweat and tears (and probably blood, considering the fact that I'm back to playing rugby). I need to make exercising a habit and do it even if I don't want to. The question should be, "Would you rather be thinner and healthier, or sit on the couch for the hour or so it'll take you to burn some calories?" The answer should always be the former, although it hasn't been that way lately.

I've been using the excuse of studying and work instead of exercise, but in reality instead of doing something productive like that, I've been either watching TV or messing around on the internet. As a result, my weight-loss has stalled and my grades have been suffering. (That's another source of frustration...I know I can get straight-As. Not A-s, but A. It's just a matter of putting in the work. And I've been slacking lately and thinking I can get away with putting minimal work and still do well. Not!)

Ok, enough self-pity and beating myself up. I just needed to get that out of my system and get on with it. I figure if I say it enough times, then something's bound to change, right?

Exhausting weekend, now get back on the wagon!

The rugby game went really well. They even got some shots of me running.

But with it being the first warm day in months and also just being Colorado, it was super dry and thus super exhausting to run at all. I had parched lips within 30 seconds of stepping out onto the field. Yikes! So yeah, I need to get in better shape.

In the end, I got to play about 23 minutes, which was plenty, and I had an absolute blast. The Roommie and I devised a running plan to help us get fitter and so far it hasn't worked. Well, it's mostly because I haven't been planning or scheduling the rest of my life accordingly and thus need to wake up early to do homework/study instead of the planned run. So this week's plan has been shifted by a couple days and hopefully I'll be able to keep up with it all.

The same goes for food. I had a menu planned out and everything for the week's meals but then we had a potluck on Friday for the team and it all went downhill from there. It's like a bad circle of messing up...I don't eat well if I don't plan out meals, but if something throws my meal plan off, then I stop eating well and it all goes to shit.

The moral of the story is that I need to get my life in order and everything will go from there. I do really well when I have a routine and everything planned out hour by hour almost. Or at least some sort of plan will do. (On that note, I'm worried about the month of May when school will be done and I won't really have any sort of schedule. Even rugby is done. That leads to sleeping until 1 pm and wasting my life away. No bueno.)

And here's a parting shot of me picking up the ball and knocking a whole bunch of girls over.

Unfortunately that last part is not pictured, just the part where my gut seemingly gets in the way of bending over. Damn painted on jerseys...they accentuate all the curves I don't want people to see!

Down a bit in poundage and up a bit in happiness

I'm back to a 2-0-something kind of weight (207.0 to be exact), "dropping" four pounds since Monday. I think a lot of that had to do with TOM so I'm not really celebrating at all since I didn't have to do much to lose this weight, besides wait out a natural biological process. But it's still nice to see that I haven't gained any weight since my last weigh-in, and actually lost a couple pounds since my last legitimate weigh-in. I suspect I'm actually even lower than that since I've been feeling super dehydrated lately, so I've been drinking a lot of water the last couple of days to try to get myself to where I need to be. In fact, just writing that made me reach for my water bottle and take a long swig of it. You should too.

As for rugby...oh, rugby. We have a HUGE game this weekend against a spectacularly good team and my original goal for the season was to start in this game. Well, I'm not and I'm supremely happy about that. I mean, I would love to be good enough to start, but I know my fitness is not even close to that needed for an 80 minute intense match. So my amended goal was to be rostered (a substitute) and that's exactly what happened, which is awesome. I do hope I get to play a few minutes, although I don't think I'll be put in unless someone gets hurt, which is a bummer.

The good news on that front is I've beat out one of the girls I didn't think I could for a spot on the roster, and my coach has been training me in a new position, which would give me more depth. She also does think I'm rather good and so there's hope for me to make the starting side a few times next season if I keep improving (and in my opinion) get my fitness up and lose some poundage.

BUT, I'm kind of worried about the girl that's in my current position because she's super good, super fast, super strong, and everyone loves her. So there's no real hope of regaining my spot back, I think. Not only would I have to spend the summer in the gym (in addition to swim, bike, run training, work, and school, and some summer relaxation) to get stronger and fitter, but I would also have to learn a whole new position so that I don't have to compete against her.

If you're thoroughly confused about positioning, I'm mostly talking about the scrum. I usually play #3 on this team, have played #2 on other teams, and am now training to be #1 (at the top of the picture #1 is above the white #2, actually to the left of him).

The two positions, #1 and #3, are very similar except #3 goes into a scrum with both shoulders in, while #1 only has his right shoulder in and pushing. And that's what's been throwing me off. That, and binding on with my arm in the right spot.

Images courtesy of The Telegraph and Wikipedia, respectively.