On the Road Again

Labor Day weekend is pretty much the pinnacle of the bicycling season in Michigan. Every year, 1500 or so cyclists ride the DALMAC tour, 350+ miles from Lansing to Mackinaw City, over the course of 4 or 5 days.

I didn’t ride DALMAC this year; but, in honor of the Pinnacle of Michigan Bicycling, my riding buddy and I rode 77 miles on Saturday, the pinnacle of our own riding season. And this morning, 4M and I did another 35 miles, which put me over 1000 miles for the second year in a row. Woohoo!


To put that in context. . .

I bought my first touring bike after I got out of college, before Molly and I started dating. I started going for rides out on the country roads around OurTown, maybe 20 miles or so at a time. When Molly and I got married, I bought her a bike (a mixte frame, which she still has; it’s almost kind of a cool relic these days), and we would go on rides together.

By around 1982 or so, a few other guys in our community took up cycling, and we started riding together. I rode my first DALMAC in 1983, and every year from ’84-’86, I rode over 3000 miles per year (in ’85, I maxed out at 3664 – one of my riding buddies and I thought it would be really cool to say that we averaged 10 miles per day for the entire year)

2F was a year old when I rode my last DALMAC, and Molly, uh, let me know that training for DALMAC was starting to interfere with the demands that two toddlers were placing on our lives. So, I stopped riding DALMAC, and cut my miles back. Still, from ’87-‘93, I averaged over 2300 miles per year. Changes in my job meant that I rode even less after that, but still, in ’95, I rode over 1200 miles. ’96 was the year I switched jobs and started with my long commute. I didn’t even track my miles that year, but Molly and I, in honor of turning 40, ‘bootlegged’ the last day of the DALMAC tour that year. We weren’t quite in ‘DALMAC shape’, but we had a good time.

After that, I basically stopped riding for several years. My long commute and growing family just pushed cycling to the bottom of the priority list.

About 7 or 8 years ago, I started getting back on the bike. My old community riding buddies invited me on a ride with them. I rode about 5 miles, and thought I was gonna die. I had to stop, and lie on the ground, and wait for my heart to stop pounding out of my chest. It was really pretty humiliating – I used to ride 35 miles just as a routine matter, and here, I could barely do five miles without dying.

But, I knew the only way for me to get in better shape was to keep riding. If five miles was all I could do, I was at least gonna do five miles. And then eight, and then ten, and then twelve. For the next several years, I went out as often as I could on the weekends, riding miles considerably reduced from what I’d once done. There was a 17-mile ride that I used to do as my first, shake-out-the-legs ride of the season. Now, it was my goal for the summer – if I worked hard, I could do a 17-miler by the end of the summer. Or maybe (*gasp*) a 20-miler. I didn’t track my miles for those years, but I vaguely recall that something around 200-300 was a typical season for me.

And Molly, solicitous as she has always been for my health and well-being, would ride with me, when she could. Which provided another marker for how far I’d fallen. ‘Back in the day’, I’d ride with Molly when I didn’t care how good a workout I got – if I rode hard, she couldn’t remotely keep up with me. But now, she was dusting me. It became one of my goals to get strong enough to where she didn’t have to wait for me.

In 2006, I started my weight-loss program, and, as part of the program, I took a more aggressive approach to riding. Instead of starting the season with 10-12 mile rides, I started with a 15-miler, and built up to 20 miles pretty quickly. My ‘pinnacle’ goal for that year was to do the 35-mile ride that I used to do ‘back in the day’. It was actually kind of an exciting year – I was rediscovering miles and miles of really nice rides that I hadn’t done in years. I think I finished ’06 with something on the order of 600 miles.

Last year, I was even more aggressive. We built up to 30-milers pretty early in the season, did a 50-miler over Labor Day, and ended up with over 1200 miles for the year. And this year, I’m on pace for 1300-1400, depending on how the weather falls in November. . .


This is all like the next chapter of The Great Weight Loss. It’s like a whole chunk of my life that had been lost has been restored to me. I had almost forgotten the joy I got from being out on my bike. And, when I was over 300 pounds, even though I was getting on the bike in whatever ‘reduced’ capacity I could manage, I was pretty sure those days were gone forever.

So, as I said, when I started being able to ride miles that I hadn’t been able to do in years, it was like being re-introduced to an old friend. Corners of the countryside around OurTown that I hadn’t seen in years, were becoming familiar to me once again. . .

There is this huge sense of having gotten a reprieve, a ‘do-over’ on a massive scale. I am so grateful to be able to ride again. At age 52, I’m in as good a physical shape as I’ve been in many years.

And, it’s a complete, gratuitous bonus to be able to ride with my sons. At various times, if my regular riding buddy has been unavailable, I’ve been able to ride with 4M or 5M; both of them are high-school athletes, and I’m sure, if they really put the hammer down, I couldn’t stay with them. But, I can make them work harder than they used to have to. . .

So, next year, I’m thinking of doing DALMAC again. 23 years after I did my last one, and 13 years after I even rode any part of the route.

And Molly and I are saving our pennies to buy a tandem. . .

I'm Not Half the Man I Used to Be

I've been promising to post something 'lighter', so here it is -

In the past five months, I've lost 75 pounds.

I've been overweight my whole adult life, and I had pretty much given up hope of ever getting to a healthy weight. Nothing I did ever worked - I mean, I would practically starve myself ('embrace the hunger pangs. . . Ommmmm'), and lose five or ten pounds, but I could never sustain anything. After a certain amount of time, you just can't keep talking yourself into enjoying the feeling of hunger. So I was pretty much resigned to life as a Fat Boy.

I refused to 'go on a diet' - take on some drastic program for a while, then once I'd lost the weight go back to what I'd always done, thus undoing all the weight loss. No, I knew that I needed to change my lifestyle - I just didn't know how.

Then, last winter, my birth-mother came for a visit (to be here when 1F had her baby), and brought a diet book with her (very subtle, my birth-mother), saying that this seemed like a really good program, aiming at lifestyle change more than simply weight loss. Just what I needed. Molly read the book, taking a week or two to absorb the ideas, and then she went to work, following the book's recipes to make healthy meals for me. And it worked. I lost 18 lb. the first two weeks, 30 the first month, 45 in two months, and now 75 lb. in five months. I'm back down now to what I weighed in college (and when Molly and I got married). The thing is, I'm still 50 lb. heavier than I was in high school, and I was a 'Fat Boy' even then. So, I've still got a ways to go.

Now I have more energy, and I just generally feel better. Six months ago, my blood pressure was 140/90, my cholesterol was 230, and my resting pulse was 78. Last week, my blood pressure was 111/62, my cholesterol was 95, and my resting pulse was 54. I was on two BP medications and a cholesterol med, and my doctor took me off all of them. And if you ask Molly, she'll tell you that things between the sheets are better than they've been for a long, long time.

I don't know how to tell you what an impact this is having on me. I feel a little like Cinderella, waiting for the clock to strike midnight. I've had such a lack of success in my life at losing weight, that I almost can't believe this is really happening. But I can tell you, this is a permanent change - I'm never going back to the way I ate before. And I am so incredibly grateful to Molly - she's doing all the work. Food preparation is taking significantly more of her time now, but she's happy to do it for me. It communicates her love to me in an incredibly deep way. I mean, she really does want to keep me around for a while longer, and grow old with me.

So goodbye, mayonnaise - enjoyed the time we had together, but I just can't hang with you anymore. So long, ice cream - it was fun, but I gotta go now. Bye-bye, pizza - you had to know this was coming, right? And hello, spinach - I can't believe we never got to know each other before now. Same for you, blueberries and cherries. And green tea. And my old friend fish, sorry I neglected you for so long. Stick around, chicken, but don't bring you skin with you, OK?

I apologize if I'm being too 'preachy' about this; I really do know the difference between weight loss and something REALLY of ultimate importance. But this is so amazing to me, so flat-out miraculous, that I just sort of rattle on about it. If you all will just indulge me for a moment here, you'll be very kind. . . Thanks for listening.

-------------------------

edit June 22 - Molly is urging me to tell you all 'the whole story' of just how miraculous this weight loss is. . .

Last fall, I asked for prayer in one of the meetings of the Christian community Molly and I belong to, because I was so discouraged about my inability to lose weight, and my weight was starting to affect my health, and bring my long-term viability into question. No big deal, no falling down, no 'HEEE-YUHL', just asking some folks to pray for me. And then, this winter, my birth-mother showed up with this diet.

Now, the timing of things could just be a happy coincidence (well, it is AT LEAST that, isn't it?). I mean, I'm an engineer; I have a Master's degree. I understand the laws of physics, cause and effect, all that. But - what if it's NOT just a happy coincidence? That possibility has to be acknowledged.

And, at the very least, after decades of nothing working, of beating the crap out of myself to no avail, I am amazed and grateful that now, finally, somthing is working, and it's happening when it never did before.

(4/3 comments)