Here I Go Again

I haven't even looked at this blog since my last post. Hardly seems like a year has gone by since then. Especially as I seem to be right back at the beginning again.

I wasn't able to sustain cycling last year and I spent most of the last year doing pretty much nothing as far as physical activity goes. Played a lot of World of Warcraft, but not much in the way of exercise. With predictable results.

At the end of February I chose to park my car and start walking to and from work. The exercise would do me good and with gasoline prices rising, would save me money (well, sort of). The distance to work is 2.7 miles, give or take a tenth, and is primarily downhill on the way in and uphill on the way back. The first day I walked it, it took me 55 minutes to walk in and 59 minutes to walk back, which wasn't too bad. After a month or so I had it down to 49 minutes each way.

The whole time I was looking forward to when there would be no ice and snow so I could start riding instead. The first day I felt I could ride in to work I felt like my heart would burst. Even with my mountain bike which, while heavy, is geared much lower than my road bike and is better suited for night time riding with the wider tires, it was harder than I remembered to make it up the hill into town. Luckily I realized I was way out of condition so I'd arranged to have a ride home.

Now that the weather is generally good, I've been riding every day in both directions. I'm pretty proud of the fact that despite my weight and lack of fitness I have not had to stop and push the bike at all. Even coming up over the short and steep (12% grade max) Banzai bridge, the long gradual climb after that and the steeper quarter mile right at the end.

On the 21st I stepped on the scale for the first time in a year and was chagrined to find that I had put on more weight than I had thought. I figured I was around 245 to 250, but the scale on Monday evening read 272.2. That pretty much decided me that I had to keep on with what I knew worked from two years ago.

Over the last week I've felt like the "spirit of cycling" has come back to me, and part of that is eating right to get the best results. I've started using FitDay.com, a site I had visited quite awhile back but hadn't really used much as I had a stand alone program that did much the same thing. Now that I don't have that program available, FitDay will work just as well, and I can access it from any computer I have access to.

Now it is just a matter of letting the old habits become the new habits and keep going. I like the feeling of cycling, even when it is sort of painful on the climbs. I know it will get better as time goes on, but sometimes its hard to believe where I was two years ago and where I am now and all the work I threw away. Not totally, as I have some small amount of fitness left deep inside (I couldn't do 5.4+ miles a day if I didn't. When I first started cycling 3 years ago I could only do 2.5 miles and be wiped out. Though the longer distance I do now is in 2 chunks of 2.7 miles.) but also the knowledge of nutrition and training principles that I didn't have when I started.

Time will tell how things go.