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 III

Height - 5' 10" (I'm not getting any shorter, I don't know if this is working)
Weight - 168 (down 1.5 Lbs.)
BMR - 2733.642 (Down from 2757.78325...wait, is that a good thing, less calories?)
BMI - 24.1 (down from 24.5, but still high-average)
Weight Goal - 157 Lbs. (We may have to re-think that)

Is Matt Fitzgerald's book Racing Weight working? Yes, I think so. At least in the sense that it's making me think more about what I'm doing. I'm the guy who's idea of a diet is cutting out pizza and beer, I'm not that high-tech. Thinking about nutrition and diet at all is a big deal for me. Now I haven't gone out and bought a scale that reads my body fat content via...doing things to my body with electric impulses or something. I might buy it if it delivered a severe electric shock anytime I didn't meet my weight goal. That would be effective.

I also have not paid a visit to my doctor to get an accurate body fat reading. The only time I go to the doctor is when something falls off.

But I am losing weight at what Fitzgerald would consider a healthy and sustainable rate. This is not because I'm counting every damn calorie I put in my body, it's more because I eat like a marmoset some days and then eat like a manatee on others. It all averages out I guess. Thanks to Matty Fitz-G (as he has insisted I call him) I hesitate before ordering nachos for dinner at Redbones and opt for the smarter, relatively healthy choice of pulled chicken and broccoli (which doesn't suck). I do think about every food choice I make all day. I'm making less insanely stupid decisions and it seems to be paying off...slowly.

I was going to go off on my "I was a fat kid" rant now, but I realized that I've already kind of done that.

And you guys know that I just put on fourteen pounds this off season so that I could buy this book and run this vastly entertaining human experiment don't you? I'm a method blogger. When Sly Stallone gained a lot of weight for Copland, people confused weight gain with good acting. Hopefully people will do the same in this case and confuse weight gain with good blogging.

Roll Call!

"Blubba Sparxxx!"
"Here!"
"Fat Stevens!"
"Here!"
Blob Roll!"
Here!"

There's suddenly added motivation to get fit and slim. It's now inside the eight week start of the season window. If I continue to lose roughly one pound per week until then, I'll be pretty good to go. My season opener will be the EFTA King of Burlingame Time Trial March 28th in Rhode Island. It's way too far to go merely for a 30 minute race, but if it can be coupled with a Rob Stine guided tour like last year, it'll be worth it. That and a trip to the nearby Tim Horton's, and it'll be a good deal.

Why are there Tim Horton's in Rhode Island and not in Massachusetts? I have no idea, but it's just plain wrong.

Back to Racing Weight...
Fitzy-G throws out some examples of people who have no problem with maintaining competition weight, people like Michael Phelps. Apparently between his two Olympic trips he added 5 hours of weight training per week and put on 14 pounds of muscle (that's what my 14 pounds was too — muscle). He also changed his nutrition regime, taking in most of his calories during late-night munchies-driven missions to 7-Eleven for Doritos and Doublestuff Oreos. Don't get me wrong, I ain't judgin' Phelps, in fact, I think he's awesome. When will the governing bodies of sport make a distinction between performance enhancing and performance inhibiting drugs? The only way pot could possibly be classified as a performance enhancing drug is if "Thinking Robot Chicken is Really, Really Funny" became a sport.

Speaking of Potts, Andy Potts that is. He's a triathlete who says that "In heavy training it's all I can do to keep my weight at 171 or 172 pounds, which is a pound or two below my racing weight." Andy worries about getting too lean, so he ingests a lot of "cheap calories" like gourmet pretzels. It sounds like Andy has big problems. Cry me a river Andy. Oh wait, don't do that your tears may contain precious calories. OK go ahead and cry, although you might have to switch to chocolate covered "gourmet pretzels." Hey Andy, screw you, I'm going to go have seconds of broccoli and tofu now, so suck it!

Can't you see I'm serious?

Fat Tuesday - Part II

Height - 5' 10"
Weight - 169.5
BMR - 2757.78325
BMI - 24.5
Weight Goal - 157 Lbs.

Yes, we've gone there. I'm posting photos of me with my shirt off. I'm like a not-hot-male-version of Liz Hatch over here. I don't know how to feel about that. I'm pretty sure I know how you feel about it. OK, Shut up or the shorts come off next week.

If you're lost go back and check out this post.

If you're wondering why I'm looking less Selleck-ish than last week, that's because I suffer from a rare form of Sympathetic Chest Hair Loss. Whenever I shave my head, my chest hair tends to thin down to just about the same length, (which would be exactly 1/4"). There has got to be a cure for this anomalous, naturally occurring, man-scaping.

Due to scheduling changes at the Big Bikes I am now going to be writing all posts at night. If they don't get writ then, they ain't gettin' writ at all. Which makes this post kind of odd because I won't be weighing in until tomorrow AM. So what I have to do is make an assumption as to whether I've made zero progress toward my weight goal or actually gained weight. I'll do the weigh in tomorrow and plug the number into the stats above. We'll see how that goes.

Hey, I'm a bike racist, I'm a master of the preemptive excuse.

I have my reasons for thinking that I'm going to weigh in a little hefty tomorrow. In Matt Fitzgerald's book "Racing Weight," he talks about how athletes let down their dietary guard on weekends. Athletes do it, and I do too. I stayed on a decent plan this week. Generally my daily intake looked something like this:

• Breakfast - 3/4 Cup Steel Cut Oats with dried cranberries, soy milk, and brown sugar, pint of O.J. , and Two cups of coffee with soy milk.
  
• Lunch - Turkey on wheat with provolone and spinach.
• Snack - Cup of Greek 0% fat yogurt and an apple
• Dinner - Some sort of protein (tuna, chicken, tofu) on Salad with maybe a little brown rice
  

That's not a whole lot of food mind you, but I'm not really on a crazy/sick riding regiment right now. Problem is the freakin' weekend. Friday was dinner at the sister's house, which always means overeating. It is a house of magnificent snacks and wonderful culinary delights. "Hmm, while I'm waiting for my healthy dinner dinner I'll just finish my nephew's meatball sub...and my niece's pepperoni pizza." Yes dinner was preceded by a brisk 5.5 mile run that looked something like this:


Strange, I've never noticed my striking resemblance to a proboscis monkey doing a Richard Nixon impression before.

Oh, this is whole soy milk and tofu business. I was vegan for longer than M*A*S*H was on the air. I still can't see myself drinking "real" milk. Unless I could drink it straight from the udder and get it while it was still hot. That would be so yummy...and normal.

I had points to make about Fitzgerald's book today. Oh yes, the rest of my weekend cheating involved a bunch of beers at an engagement party Saturday night and some late night cheese-eating. And then there was ihop after our little ride Sunday followed by Thai take-out Sunday night. Not good if you want to be not-fat.

I did learn something from the book, I learned that an 8% weight gain is not only normal, but a good thing. For a guy of my stature that means a ten pound gain! I'm a little over 8% above weight though. Usually professional cyclists burn that ten pounds off during their first training camp.
OK, when's my first training camp? 29er Crew boss man Travis Ott emailed me today to say that my new GEARED Superfly HT frame will be here next week. He must have forgotten to mention the training camp. What's that? Somewhere amongst all the gibberish I actually mentioned something you want to hear about? Tough shit skippy, we're going to talk more about my fatty-fatty-boom-boom.

But not much more, I swear.

Fitzgerald also talks about how Kenyan marathon runners (Please don't quote me on this. I don't get paid to do this and I can't be bothered to open the book back up to confirm the crap that is coming out of my fingers here.) and how they can't possibly eat enough when they're in their peak training phase. I think he said they burn like 172,000 calories a day and they just walk into KFC and say "can I have a menu? Did I say 'a menu,' I meant THE MENU...the whole thing. Moses, pull the truck around." I take that back. That's pretty much verbatim from the book. Amazing.

Matty does say that when cyclists are training 20 hours per week, like Kenyan marathon runners, they have trouble keeping up with their body's caloric intake requirements. With how hopeless I've proven to be at sticking to the plan here, that might be my only route — 20 hours per week.

Unless, unless, hear me out...Fitzgerald also talks about "sending messages to your body" a whole lot. Like if you starve yourself, your body gets the message that your metabolism should slow down and hold onto more calories. Well I'm going to try sending my body a message that says, "Bacon and beer are good for you...gooood for you. You got it? Now cut it out with this turning them into man boobs and man-handles (that's what we called them in prison) crap OK?"

I hope you're finding this series on weight loss helpful.

Questions and Answers
(And a Contest...shh)

Yesterday I started responding to the questions in my comments section, and thought myself:

"Hey douche bag, you could make a post out of all this crap." So that's what I've done.

Oh, the above photo montage...you don't want to know about that. I just made it because I needed something to eclipse the weirdness of the naked nachos photo.

Ah yes, The Contest:

If you can guess the inspiration for the above image, you will WIN a Big Bikes Mix Tape (which is actually a CD). This won't be some MP3 massive file dump with thousands of songs on it, totaling hours of haphazardly selected music. It will be comprised of 90 minutes of well thought out music. Just like we made 'em back in the olden days. Of course the cover will be the above image (or the naked nachos photo, your choice).

Wow, that is a HUGE incentive to twist your brain inside out trying to figure out what the hell is going on in that creepy, creepy picture. But really...I make sick mix tapes, it's the only thing in life, about which, I will actually stand up and say: "Dude, I am wicked good at this shit."

This contest will run as long as it takes to produce a winner, or until I get bored with it like I did Fat Tuesday and stop talking about it. Good luck!

And now...Answers for you!

Fatmarc Vanderbacon said...

I gotta couch, and free entry if you feel the need to race Granogue down in delaware...

just sayin'

respect
fm

8:40 AM

Big Bikes said...

Fatmarc,

That event occurs while I'm still in school and working weekends; that said,
a theme of this season may be going to races where:

a.) The entry is free

and

b.) There is a couch for me to crash on

What I'm saying is — anything is possible. Appreciate the offer. I'll be in touch.

rosey said...

wasn't the darkhorse 40 less than $35 recently? are all these mtb races trying to copy battenkill? more than $1 per mile? it's a far drive for these but to top it off with the high entry fees really stings.

i guess i will stick to $10 outlaw races with all you can drink beer.

10:21 AM

Big Bikes said...

Rosey,

But The Darkhorse 40 is a race that's actually worth it. They feed you and beer you and make sure you have a good time. It's not like dropping $60 on some Kenda Cup or somethin'. And by all means, keep having outlaws races, hopefully I can make the next one.

Amanda said...

naked nachos?

i can't seem to get to reading Matt either...

10:57 AM

Big Bikes said...

Amanda,

damn, I guess Spanish isn't as hard a language to crack as say — Navajo. (I do wonder how you say "nachos" in Navajo.)
Post ride, in a bonk, couldn't wait for dinner, couldn't decide whether to shower or eat first, got halfway to the shower, doubled back for the recovery nachos, and ate them in the bedroom, hunched in a wooden chair...normal.

David Alden said...

Yo. I'm in the same boat (how appropriate with this weather) in terms of the weight loss, though I suspect I had more to lose. I'm about 20lb down with 10lb to go. I signed up for Wildcat--should be a fun one. The burning question is--gears or no gears?
http://beardedbiker.blogspot.com/
http://www.racer-x.cx/

11:31 AM

Big Bikes said...

Dave,

Ya, I'm going on a weather-based training schedule right now. I ride when it's sunny and sit on my ass and eat when it's rainy. I can't say that it's working, but I am more sane than I normally am in late March. There must be a correlation between fat cells and sanity, that's all there is to it. I'll be on gears at Wildcat, good luck with the SS if you decide to go that route.

Emily said...

this Stoopid 50... will it be fun? or just stoopid? is it like all the good parts of W101 without the fire roads? I'm bummin I'm gonna miss Wilderness this year, maybe I should come up for this one?

1:20 PM

Big Bikes said...

Emily,

I hear it's Stoopid fresh! Just like the 101 without the gravel. Everyone I know who went last year liked it a lot. And only some of them used to huff a lot of glue.

Fat Chance said...

DH40- great race and you should bring the girl. Hopefully we wont have the super strong heat this year.

The picture: one really needs to shed some light for the enquiring minds...

3:37 PM

Big Bikes said...

Georges,

Don't know what the girl's plans are. If she's racing mountain bikes this summer, I'll try to convince her to do it...because it's awesome. Mike and those guys put on a good show. The heat, wow, that was rough. I'm packing a coffin sized cooler of ice in the car, so I can dive into it after the race. Oh, and hey...when is the NYCMTB Highbridge Classic race?

Big Bikes also said (as he wiped a tear of exhaustion from his eye)...

I'm goin' to bed.

Thanks for reading youz guys.

-t

No We Can't All Just Get Along

I have no idea, really, why Fat Tuesday has been replaced with "Let's talk about anything but how fat I am Tuesday." Ya sure, I rode for about five hours today, and ya I was at a massive caloric deficit by the time I limped up to the Whole Foods by my house, but I might have over-rewarded myself just a little bit. This is what happens when you spend the last 25 minutes of your ride scheming about what food you're going to eat and in what order. The answer to that question for me today was "all the food" and "at the same time."

I was so ravenous and delirious ("Ravelirious" is that a word?) with hunger that when the guy at the deli counter handed me my pizza box, I'm pretty sure he drew back a bloody stump.

And that has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that...

when I left the house this morning all kitted up, I locked eyes with my neighbor from across the road. He drives a Dodge Magnum wagon, wears a flat-brimmed baseball hat, and has a chin strap. I looked at him and thought: "What a douche." And I'm almost positive he looked over at me and thought: "What a fucking faggot." (It's OK, I'm speaking in character and my character happens to be a homophobic potty mouth.)

This reminded me of another such incident that occurred up in Andover the other day. I was riding at Harold Parker, I was on a road section between woods sections, and this knucklehead in a monster truck comes barreling down the road in the opposite direction. When he gets right next to me he stomps on the accelerator — BRAARR! He probably thought he was being awesome, but I thought he was being a douche. Of course he was looking at me like my neighbor surely was — as a leotard-wearing faggot, and he wanted to let me know that in his ever-so-subtle way.

Here's the thing, it is highly unlikely that someone could convince me that my Magnum-driving-neighbor or that head-injury-having monster truck driver are not grade-A douche bags, nor could someone likely convince them that I am not a leotard wearing faggot. In the defense of me being a leotard-wearing faggot they would just say: "Look dyude, he's wearing a leo-taahd...just gimme the faggit paaht OK?" And they would be half right. Dammit!

I'd like to think that when I returned from my ride at 3:30 this afternoon, eight hours after I'd seen my chin-strapped neighbor, and saw him sitting at the light in his " I have-no-penis-mobile," that he maybe, just maybe, thought for a split second that I was wicked hardcore for riding my bike for eight hours. (I was at school for a few of those hours, but it would have seemed to him like I'd been riding all day.) In reality there's no way he did though. He was almost definitely looking at me going: "Dyude, that quee-ah was out they-ah faggn' it up and leo-taahding around for a wicked long time...fuckin'."

Harold Parker. Where I go to "fag it up and leotard around."

Fat Tuesday

Height - 5' 10"
Weight - 170.5 Lbs.
BMR - 1779.215
BMI - 24.5
Weight Goal - 157 Lbs.


This is the beginning of a human experiment. Over the next two months or so I will be applying principles gathered from the new book by Matt Fitzgerald: "Racing Weight - How to Get Lean for Peak Performance" in a desperate attempt to...get lean for peak performance. I'll be dedicating Tuesdays from now until race season starts in April to documenting my progress.

While my family and some friends (besides Jon Bruno) tell me that I'm already too thin, I know that amongst the ranks of wanna-be-professional cyclists I am pretty overweight. I'm sure Jay Leno's family tells him that he doesn't have an incredibly over-sized head. This is nice but it's not true. We're cyclists, we have a different idea of what ideal weight is. It has nothing to do with "looking good" or "being sexy." It has everything to do feeling good and going fast. If we wanted to look good and be sexy, we'd hit the gym, go tanning, then do laundry. Um...bro.

Part One of "Racing Weight" outlines why an endurance athlete will benefit from losing weight. Fitzgerald discusses Lance Armstrong's huge transformation from powerhouse sprinter to Tour De France winner: "Do you need to get cancer and lose a lot of weight to become a better endurance athlete? Absolutely not!"

Phew! I'm relieved that I don't have to go out and get cancer. I have no idea how to do that, and I don't live anywhere near a DuPont plant.

The first step is finding your optimum racing weight. According to Fitzgerald: "If you're close to your ultimate performance level, you're close to your optimal performance weight." This blog may seem to serve no purpose whatsoever but it does serve some purpose...to me...sometimes. I don't keep a training log but, thanks to the blog, I can go back and really see what was going on at a given time. To determine what my "ultimate performance level" is, I just had to look at the best race of my best season: Root 66, Hodges Village Dam 2008. At the time I weighed about 157 Lbs. That is not what I weighed at any point last season and it is far from what I weigh now.

Next step was to calculate my Basal Metabolic Rate or BMR. This tells me how many calories someone of my height, weight, and age should ingest in a day. The calculator defaults to the "female" setting so my first calculation gave me a start — 1561.175 calories, AAH! I take in that many calories before breakfast. Recalibrate for male and calculate...1779.215. That's better. Still a little intimidating, probably no more Bacon, Egg, and Cheese on Boston Cream Donuts anytime soon. Apparently counting calories-in is key to successful weight loss, so this is a start.

I'm going to begin calorie counting today, I'm only three chapters into the book at this point, I'll apply any other awesome weight loss tricks I learn over the next week and report back Tuesday.

A guy named Michael Pollan is on NPR right now. He may have s simpler plan: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." Maybe I'm over-thinning this. Over-thinking...thinking.

1.19.10 Morning weigh-in 170.5 Lbs.
See, I don't look all that skinny, do I?
Body Dysmorphia my fat ass (and man-boobs).

Fat Tuesday
Part VI in a Series

Height - 5' 10"
Weight - 168.5 Lbs. (Oops. Guess that's what a week of all you can eat buffets can do to ya)
(My fingers are too fat to use a calculator to figure out my BMI and BMR today)
Weight Goal - 157 Lbs. (I AM LAUGHING OUT LOUD!)

As someone who sort of plays a bike mechanic in real life, I should know better than to begin a project before I've read the instructions through to the end. Last week I was babbling about the NuVal system, assuming that Matt Fitzgerald was talking about it in his book Racing Weight because it's the latest-greatest thing. Wrong! I should have finished the chapter before I wandered off to buy huge amounts of spinach and green beans (and throw away my massive stash soda and double stuff Oreos). The latest-greatest is actually Fitzgerald's own system the "Diet Quality Score, " or DQS for acronym-iness. By utilizing this system you will come up with an overall score for your daily food intake. It does make sense (more so than the NuVal, which if you take literally, will lead you to eat just spinach and green beans all the time). Let me see if I can make some sense here...

The first time you eat a food item, it scores higher. Each time you eat it after that it scores lower and lower. This way, if you want to get a high score so you can win the "making racing weight game" you need to eat a variety of high quality foods.

Although I kind of went into a light coma when Fitzgerald started talking about scores (scores involve numbers, numbers make me sleepy...and nauseous) my ears lit up when he started talking about how "a can of soda can save your life in the right conditions." He doesn't elaborate, although I'm guessing he's talking about that scene in the movie "Bad Boys," (the one with Sean Penn not the one with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence) where Sean Penn knows some bad dudes are totally about to f— with him, so he goes down to the RC Cola machine and starts buying soda after soda, then he puts the cans in a pillowcase, and then when the bad dudes descend upon him, he's ready — WHAM! He smashes the Kurgan from Highlander right in the nose with a pillowcase full of RC Colas. (Talk about product placement. Back in '83 Sears couldn't keep "Pillowcases Full of RC Cola Cans" on the shelf.)


Only it's not really The Kurgan, it's "Viking Lofgren," played by Clancy Brown who played The Kurgan. I'm not sure why in both Highlander and Bad Boys, he didn't go by his real name: Clancy. Nothing strikes fear into the hearts of reform school boys and Scottish warriors like a guy named CLANCY.

Fitzgerald also talks about portions as relating to the size of your outstretched hands. I have disproportionately large hands for my height and weight. You know what they say about short guys with really big hands right? They have big...

Guts (because they measured out portions that are too large using this system).

Speaking of guts, Matt keeps coming back to the basic, obvious, you-don't-need-a-fancy-diet-score-to-figure-it-out principle of CALORIES in CALORIES OUT. Though this is the last thing the "obesity is a disease" club wants to hear. Is obesity a new disease? When was it discovered? Has it always been a disease? Is it just that more people get it now? Do you catch it from leading an indolent life full of energy saving technology and eating calorically dense, nutrient poor foods?

Or maybe it's a newer virus, like AIDS. Did humans initially contract fatness from having sex with or eating obese monkeys?

I've read that a malfunctioning hypothalamus can cause the satiation (stop cramming chili cheese fries down your gullet) message to fire, so that people think they're hungry when they're not. A little naturalistic observation down at The Old Country Buffet would disprove this theory. There is no way that Mr. 300-pound behemoth is going back up for his his third 1500 calorie plate of food because his hypothalamus is telling him "Hey...hey big guy...I think you're still hungry, go get some more food OK?"

Looks like we ran out of time just a little bit late at The Big Bikes today.

P.S. - the photos at the top...
on the left I'm wearing my normal-person-swimsuit. On the right I'm wearing my I'm-a-freakin'-weirdo-Speedo that I go "proper-swimming" in. When we were down in Mexico last week, on vacation, I would wear the weirdo-suit under the normal-suit down to the beach. When it was time to proper-swim, I would tear off the normal-suit, revealing the Speedo. I said "it was like on Knight Rider when Kit would come out of the back of that semi!" Miriam's sister was totally freaked out.

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.