The Weekend in Short

I just don' t remember a December ever that began with weather as nice as we had this weekend, ever.  But I know that I took full advantage of it.

Saturday ended up being about 30 miles of mountain bike riding with Larry and we also tried to put tubeless tires on my bike which didn't work because the Bontrager wheels that came with the bike while are tubeless wheels are also jacked up.  I will deal with that later... but we had a great ride from Larry's place over by Ute Valley Park, through the park, over to Garden of the Gods, through there then around in Red Rock Canyon a bit then back.  After Larry and I worked on the bike some we went for another ride in UVP.

It was fun riding in Ute Vally Park though... I confided in Larry during the ride that it was my first time riding a mountain bike in UVP since my age had the number 2 in it.  And by that I  mean the first digit in my age... not the second!  But Saturday was fun.  I learned a lot about what I like to ride and what I don't like to ride now.  I also wrecked 3-4 times on Saturday, all were slow going up-hill, couldn't unclip and tipping over kind of wrecks but two of them were really bad.  One of them I bruised my right hand bad on landing (thank god I wore the full gloves) and the second one I landed on my right leg and tore up my thigh on the rocks.  It's gonna happen.  I needs to relube my cleats and my pedals as I think that is why I was not able to release as smoothly as I had been.

Saturday though, we rode about 30 miles and I burned according to my Garmin only about 1000 calories.  Now in theory if I had run those thirty miles I would have burned just a bit more than 3000 calories.  I have always said there is about a 3/1 ratio between energy expenditure between cycling and running and this sort of unofficially goes along with that.  Another thing about riding... it doesn't or at least doesn't seem to require me to eat so much on the go for the same reasons... drink a lot sure... the calorie intake is way lower... way.

Photo by Larry DeWitt.  Super mild weather on December 1, 2012.

But the ride and the wrecks definitely took a toll on me and I had to take my time Sunday morning getting out of the house for my Pikes Peak round trip for December.  In a nutshell... the first ten miles up went rather well.  The last three to the summit were a challenge due to temps, wind, ice and snow.  The wind on the summit was worse than anything I have ever seen.  I came down the magic short-cut route and was damned glad to be down in the trees and sheltered from the conditions above.  I will say that after a period of uncertainty, it is nice to finally hit a point where you realize that you aren't going to be dying anytime immediately that was exactly what  I felt after I was about two miles down from the summit. 

Today is a day off and I am definitely enjoying it.  One of the best parts of having a coach for me is the planned rest otherwise I'd be out trying to do something today.  No... today's mission is a touch more simple... today is also the first day of my Paleo experiment.

I have spent the past few weeks preparing for this, studying what I can have and can't.  I think I will be okay given how much I have grown to appreciate eating vegetables more than meat sometimes and also how I try to stay away from obviously bad foods.  I admit, I will cheat from time to time.  If we go to Joseph's or the Pepper Tree for instance I am not going adhere.. hell no!  But we go to those types of places rarely so it isn't that big of an issue.

Today, day one, I didn't have my typical morning granola bar or two that I usually have.  The funny thing is that granola bars really are not that healthy when you look at the ingredients and I have always known this... but saying that you had a granola bar for breakfast sounds a hell of lot better than pop-tarts, donuts, or a ton of other things.  Anyway, I made some adjustments and so far I am handling today rather well.  According to the scale today I was 157.4  pounds, 12.9% body fat and my BMI is 24.6.  It will be interesting to see how those numbers shift the next few weeks.