Fat Tuesday (Sort of)

Height - 5' 10"
Weight - 169 Lbs. (This is going well))
Weight Goal - 157 Lbs. (Effectively...on the moon, or if I cut off an appendage)

OK, I give up. I actually had a really good day on the scale earlier this week (166 Lbs.) then I ballooned back up just before Fat Tuesday weigh in. Damn! I'm never gonna make weight for the frickin' bike race at this rate. I did read one thing in Matt Fitzgerald's book Racing Weight that I took to heart. He says that your body doesn't tell you that it's full until 20 minutes after it has reached capacity. The way I interpret this is that you should jam as much food in your mouth as you can within a period of twenty minutes, before your body can shut the party down! This goes along with grandfather's saying about car accidents:

"Studies show that most car accidents occur within a mile of your house...so when I leave the house, I just DRIVE LIKE HELL to get away from it!"

Another thing I took to heart was Fitzgerald's suggestion to take fish oil, in some form. I am old, I have joint pain, I think I may even "the Arthur-itis," I try to get my Omega-3s wherever I can. Now, I eat sardines a couple times a week (generally), but it's tough. I'm often not in the mood for them and you definitely don't want to eat them any time close to when you're going to be exercising. I was at Trader Joe's the other day and I saw they had Salmon Oil on the shelf and it was cheap, so I grabbed some, figuring this would be the solution to my intermittent desire for sardines. It was...sort of.

I took the first pill the other day before a ride. About fifteen minutes in it started backing up on me. The instructions on the pills do say to take with food and I had not heeded this advice. I don't eat in the morning if I'm riding for less than an hour. That fish pill was in my gut, washing around in a puddle of orange juice, next to my multi-vitamin. Ah, I can taste it now....

You know it was like? It was like opening a can of sardines, dumping out the sardines, and then tilting your head back, opening your mouth, tipping the can sideways, and letting all that thick, sardine-chunk-filled oil just cascade into your mouth.

Each reeking-of-dead-aquatic-things-breath cut through my minty fresh toothpaste mouth; making my eyes water as I let out an audible: "Oogh."

Maybe when they say: "Take with food," they mean: "Take this wretched, disgusting little capsule of pureed fish guts, place it carefully in a ground beef patty, top it with sharp cheddar cheese, wrap it in a bacon weave shell with hot dog head, legs and tail, forming an edible turtle-sculpture.

That ought to mask the taste. And even if it doesn't do the trick, it'll be a tasty way to try.

(stolen from This is Why You're Fat).

"It's cool. It's an all purpose shape--a box."

Could be anything inside.

Fat Tuesday Part IV

(And a bit of SSUSA)

Height - 5' 10"
Weight - 500 (up 332 Lbs., oops)
BMR - 5939.6 (now I can have waffle fry nachos three meals a day!)
BMI -71.7 (obesity is classified as anything over 30)
Weight Goal - 157 Lbs (ya right)



Wow, I was so spent from the tornado trip to Tucson that I couldn't even muster a lame, Monday—litany of excuses—post. And now, being the perpetually lame-ass that I am, I'm only going to talk about SSUSA regarding how it impacted my quest to make my optimum racing weight. It impacted it like a meteor made of bacon wrapped bacon. Maybe that had something to do with the weight gain—all that bacon wrapped bacon I ate after the race. Or the hot dog outside the Surly Wench. Or the pizza. Or the beer...no couldn't have been the beer. It must have been all that delicious rotisserie chicken we all ripped apart and devoured with our bare hands around the bonfire the night after the race. I felt like a frickin' viking, home from the battle, feasting on...gourmet rotisserie chicken. Vikings kicked a lot of ass and stole a lot of treasure. If anyone could've afforded fine rotisserie chicken; it would have been frickin' Vikings.

The full post will be up on the 29er Crew blog later in the week. Well maybe not the full post. I have plans for the full story. I think Bicycling might want to buy it, that is if I could work it into a piece called: "Get fat fast! Five easy steps to off-season weight gain." No, you're right, they probably won't buy that.

George has some thoughts and words on SSUSA though.

And no, I'm not even really going to yammer about Racing Weight today either. Truth is I haven't even picked the book up since last week, too busy reading for the school to get to it.

I am weak and spent and not at all my typical garrulous self, so I will now half-assedly caption these photos, eat some cheap carbs, and then pass out. I think I may have passed out halfway through writing this post. More words later...

There will be blood. Blood and prickly things stuck in my legs.

But it was a dry-not-16°-like-Boston-heat.

Now that's f-in' teamwork!
That's the kind of not-race it was.
A race with cattle gates in it.
Not a lot like a ski area race.

I have an aversion to cactus.

It might have something to do with the time I dove face first...onto a cactus.

Not on purpose.