Beer is a Poison
No biking today. Enjoying a well earned rest day and saving up for the weekend. Feeling good today though a hair tired and my legs are happy to be off. Tomorrow I'm leaning towards an early Allamuchy ride of 3 hours, no stopping if possible. I put the Blue Grooves back on this morning so I may be pre-loading an obstacle there. Sunday is up in the air. I'm supposed to ride with Woody but I don't know if that's going to happen. He's pretty AWOL these days and I want to get another brisk 3 hours in if possible. Maybe Ringwood? Round Valley? Road? Don't know right now.
I said I wasn't going to link these anymore but it's a good weekly recap. Here are my 3 ride links for the week:
Tuesday (22.08 miles, 2128 vertical, 15.9 average)
Wednesday (22.07 miles, 2124 vertical, 16.1 average)
Thursday (19.64 miles, 1139 vertical, 16.4 average)
I'm interested in coming up with a ride metric where I use vertical/mile and my average speed to calculate a score to compare the rides. But I don't think it's accurate enough to bother pursuing. Something like (feet/mile)*average would yield totally faulty numbers I think. There must be something like this "out there" already. I just need to look for it. I'm sure I need some sort of normalization of the vertical/mile number. Maybe divide that by 100 since that's a sort of gold standard. But then if I'm just dividing every 'score' by 100 the ratio stays the same. Useless rambling.
Something else of interest is the ride map from the race last week. This is what mine looked like:
This is what it should have looked like:
Click the image for a link to the motionbased ride for each. The second is one of the MASS series guys named Rick Bullotta. Note he averaged 1 mph faster than me which is a pretty big difference. Is it me or is that full race loop one convoluted course?
Someone recently asked me if I would change anything about the past year of training and I said not really. I changed my mind and the one thing would be to do one very long mountain bike ride per month. That's probably an important element that's been missing in my training, enough 30-40-50 mile mountain bike rides, or for that matter any at all. My longest non-LM ride was 21 miles at Allamuchy a few months ago. It's hard to show up for these events not having ridden substantial miles very often and I don't really count the road though it works in a pinch. Starting now I'm going to add that to my training. In the next 3 months I have at least 3 events which fill this gap with the Darkhorse 40, the 24HOA, and the 50k (yes it's still 50 at this point). After October I need to keep that going through the winter, a task which could be a chilly proposition come February.
Third Party, obviously itching from the lack of drama recently, dropped me a line yesterday saying that the new MTBNJ colored titles make the member list resemble a gay pride flag. I actually LOLed at that. Good work, Third.
FatCat
"Eat less - yes, that's really all it. It's all mathematics and ball bearings these days and eating less calories is, of course the answer. For me it's always bee true weight I keep off too. I graduated RU 235. Now I'm 205. I'm a sloth tho. I just eat less and hardly touch booze now. Such is life. Now if I wasn't such a sloth then who knows. Anyway, you were right about Avatars. I know it has nothing to do with your blog but it's my dime."
Beer is evil in this equation. I stopped cold for the first 3 months of the year and drink maybe 1-2 a week at this point. Other than the 7 last weekend and the Vinny weekend I haven't had more than 3 in any one sitting. That's probably what has kept me from blowing up into the 200s again. That and not drinking a cup of hot fat and eating the head of Alfredo Garcia every meal.
Avatars - yeah, it was worse than I thought actually.
Walter
"Yes, I agree, food is an enemy of mine as well. Guess that explains the 10 pounds in a little over a month. Isnt this riding stuff and working outside in 90 degree heat supposed to counter that. I dont know where I go wrong, maybe the pint of ice cream at 10 pm isnt as ggod as I think. Again, great read, thanks."
Glad you enjoy. I guess it's a myth that you can eat what you want when you ride so much. Even in the weeks when I ride 10-12 hours a week it doesn't work that way. When I'm going that hard, I tend to need a lot more "bike energy" such as pre-ride drink, calories on the bike, and post-ride drink. You're often adding 900 calories right there. At that point it becomes the difference in weight loss versus performance gain.
Oh and the ice cream doesn't help either. And polishing off your daughter's leftovers? Bad news man.
Steve
"a lot of my comments on your blog have been through mtbnj pms, but feel free to post them over here if they are relevant, which most are not."
I delete my PMs so I don't have anything on hand. But I'll keep that in mind. Does that include when we trash people behind the scenes like making fun of Terren's big ass and Jake's ballerina lessons?
Jake
"dear norm: i too suffer from the 'fat guy on a skinny bike' syndrome. it is not entirely my fault. 'tis genetics at is finest. see, us mid-european block types are built like barrels...kegs, if you will. low to the ground for the purpose of not bending down so far and stout for carrying heavy objects over long distances. unfortunately, these traits were fantastic for my grandfather who farmed in slovakia but not so good for the modern-day bonefish who needs to be lean to climb, fit into the new "european" sized clothing and escape hungy barracuda. so as you can see, i also fight the uphill battle since i'm like a XXXXXXXL in this new european garb and end up looking like a circa 1988 materail girl.."
Good show man! I always appreciate a good ramble of words. Yeah some people battle genetics for sure but you can get lower than you think. It's just going to take a long time. I think 10 pounds a year is about the most you can expect in a maintainable sense. I remember everyone used to tell me I "shouldn't" be under 200 pounds, that it was too light. Silly.
In the American version of clothing sizes I'm a medium. How does that work? I'm not a small guy yet I'm a medium? That seems crazy. What do the 150 and 160 guys wear? Petite? When I stumble across European sized stuff medium is like a handkerchief.
ChrisG
"Oh, I wish it was as easy as it might appear. I am hungry ALL THE TIME and my diet, particularly during the week, is befitting some sort of monk. I was actually 10 pounds heavier when I was in my late teens and twenties, playing soccer and drinking way too much. I love food no less than anyone else, I suspect, but I also dig trying to go fast on my bike, so I'm willing to make the sacrifices. As simple as that equation is, it's really the core of it all. On a side note, I've had excellent results using generic hydrocortisone ointment on saddle sores. And is it just me, or is "ointment" a funny word?"
I'll check out the hydrocortisone. Ointment does sound a bit silly. Kinda like a snigglet.
I'll take your word for the food thing but man you're thin. Seems like you have some genetic advantage going on but I will admit your eating habits do seem pretty healthy. I went back to the MTBNJ discussions on meals and looked at your posts. I do remember being impressed at the time. As a recap for the readers it was stuff like turkey on whole grain, whole grain crackers, yogurt, whole wheat pasta, veggie burgers, cous cous, pierogies, baked beans, and red meat only 1-2 times a month. Breakfast was more of the same. And you don't contribute to the beer thread very often which means you follow one of the basic rules of training which is: Beer is a poison.
My suggestion on oatmeal. Mix it dry with yogurt and maybe some raisins and sliced almonds the night before and let it soak. I feel that cooked oatmeal gives me digestion issues where the uncooked seems to work better for me.
I've basically cut out cereal at this point, except for a half cup before my early morning rides. It turns out to be too much simple sugar added to the diet.
Great comments everyone! I suppose it helps when I'm more interesting and throwing out expressions like "fat cunt". Notice how Terren remains silent on the matter? He feels the pressure, especially after he sees todays FGI. Come on, I'm not really going to parade around your house naked. Well not much at least.
Friday's FGI: 188
The weekly FGI average: 190.43
Good numbers to end the week. My friday weight is -6 from last Friday and the average is -2.57. This seems to verify that your body stores waste products and water for some unknown reason. I'm not starving myself by any stretch. Just eating sensibly again as well as not eating everything in sight.
Looks to be a hot and muggy weekend. Get out and ride early, drink lots of water, and remember to enjoy it all.
I said I wasn't going to link these anymore but it's a good weekly recap. Here are my 3 ride links for the week:
Tuesday (22.08 miles, 2128 vertical, 15.9 average)
Wednesday (22.07 miles, 2124 vertical, 16.1 average)
Thursday (19.64 miles, 1139 vertical, 16.4 average)
I'm interested in coming up with a ride metric where I use vertical/mile and my average speed to calculate a score to compare the rides. But I don't think it's accurate enough to bother pursuing. Something like (feet/mile)*average would yield totally faulty numbers I think. There must be something like this "out there" already. I just need to look for it. I'm sure I need some sort of normalization of the vertical/mile number. Maybe divide that by 100 since that's a sort of gold standard. But then if I'm just dividing every 'score' by 100 the ratio stays the same. Useless rambling.
Something else of interest is the ride map from the race last week. This is what mine looked like:
This is what it should have looked like:
Click the image for a link to the motionbased ride for each. The second is one of the MASS series guys named Rick Bullotta. Note he averaged 1 mph faster than me which is a pretty big difference. Is it me or is that full race loop one convoluted course?
Someone recently asked me if I would change anything about the past year of training and I said not really. I changed my mind and the one thing would be to do one very long mountain bike ride per month. That's probably an important element that's been missing in my training, enough 30-40-50 mile mountain bike rides, or for that matter any at all. My longest non-LM ride was 21 miles at Allamuchy a few months ago. It's hard to show up for these events not having ridden substantial miles very often and I don't really count the road though it works in a pinch. Starting now I'm going to add that to my training. In the next 3 months I have at least 3 events which fill this gap with the Darkhorse 40, the 24HOA, and the 50k (yes it's still 50 at this point). After October I need to keep that going through the winter, a task which could be a chilly proposition come February.
Third Party, obviously itching from the lack of drama recently, dropped me a line yesterday saying that the new MTBNJ colored titles make the member list resemble a gay pride flag. I actually LOLed at that. Good work, Third.
FatCat
"Eat less - yes, that's really all it. It's all mathematics and ball bearings these days and eating less calories is, of course the answer. For me it's always bee true weight I keep off too. I graduated RU 235. Now I'm 205. I'm a sloth tho. I just eat less and hardly touch booze now. Such is life. Now if I wasn't such a sloth then who knows. Anyway, you were right about Avatars. I know it has nothing to do with your blog but it's my dime."
Beer is evil in this equation. I stopped cold for the first 3 months of the year and drink maybe 1-2 a week at this point. Other than the 7 last weekend and the Vinny weekend I haven't had more than 3 in any one sitting. That's probably what has kept me from blowing up into the 200s again. That and not drinking a cup of hot fat and eating the head of Alfredo Garcia every meal.
Avatars - yeah, it was worse than I thought actually.
Walter
"Yes, I agree, food is an enemy of mine as well. Guess that explains the 10 pounds in a little over a month. Isnt this riding stuff and working outside in 90 degree heat supposed to counter that. I dont know where I go wrong, maybe the pint of ice cream at 10 pm isnt as ggod as I think. Again, great read, thanks."
Glad you enjoy. I guess it's a myth that you can eat what you want when you ride so much. Even in the weeks when I ride 10-12 hours a week it doesn't work that way. When I'm going that hard, I tend to need a lot more "bike energy" such as pre-ride drink, calories on the bike, and post-ride drink. You're often adding 900 calories right there. At that point it becomes the difference in weight loss versus performance gain.
Oh and the ice cream doesn't help either. And polishing off your daughter's leftovers? Bad news man.
Steve
"a lot of my comments on your blog have been through mtbnj pms, but feel free to post them over here if they are relevant, which most are not."
I delete my PMs so I don't have anything on hand. But I'll keep that in mind. Does that include when we trash people behind the scenes like making fun of Terren's big ass and Jake's ballerina lessons?
Jake
"dear norm: i too suffer from the 'fat guy on a skinny bike' syndrome. it is not entirely my fault. 'tis genetics at is finest. see, us mid-european block types are built like barrels...kegs, if you will. low to the ground for the purpose of not bending down so far and stout for carrying heavy objects over long distances. unfortunately, these traits were fantastic for my grandfather who farmed in slovakia but not so good for the modern-day bonefish who needs to be lean to climb, fit into the new "european" sized clothing and escape hungy barracuda. so as you can see, i also fight the uphill battle since i'm like a XXXXXXXL in this new european garb and end up looking like a circa 1988 materail girl.."
Good show man! I always appreciate a good ramble of words. Yeah some people battle genetics for sure but you can get lower than you think. It's just going to take a long time. I think 10 pounds a year is about the most you can expect in a maintainable sense. I remember everyone used to tell me I "shouldn't" be under 200 pounds, that it was too light. Silly.
In the American version of clothing sizes I'm a medium. How does that work? I'm not a small guy yet I'm a medium? That seems crazy. What do the 150 and 160 guys wear? Petite? When I stumble across European sized stuff medium is like a handkerchief.
ChrisG
"Oh, I wish it was as easy as it might appear. I am hungry ALL THE TIME and my diet, particularly during the week, is befitting some sort of monk. I was actually 10 pounds heavier when I was in my late teens and twenties, playing soccer and drinking way too much. I love food no less than anyone else, I suspect, but I also dig trying to go fast on my bike, so I'm willing to make the sacrifices. As simple as that equation is, it's really the core of it all. On a side note, I've had excellent results using generic hydrocortisone ointment on saddle sores. And is it just me, or is "ointment" a funny word?"
I'll check out the hydrocortisone. Ointment does sound a bit silly. Kinda like a snigglet.
I'll take your word for the food thing but man you're thin. Seems like you have some genetic advantage going on but I will admit your eating habits do seem pretty healthy. I went back to the MTBNJ discussions on meals and looked at your posts. I do remember being impressed at the time. As a recap for the readers it was stuff like turkey on whole grain, whole grain crackers, yogurt, whole wheat pasta, veggie burgers, cous cous, pierogies, baked beans, and red meat only 1-2 times a month. Breakfast was more of the same. And you don't contribute to the beer thread very often which means you follow one of the basic rules of training which is: Beer is a poison.
My suggestion on oatmeal. Mix it dry with yogurt and maybe some raisins and sliced almonds the night before and let it soak. I feel that cooked oatmeal gives me digestion issues where the uncooked seems to work better for me.
I've basically cut out cereal at this point, except for a half cup before my early morning rides. It turns out to be too much simple sugar added to the diet.
Great comments everyone! I suppose it helps when I'm more interesting and throwing out expressions like "fat cunt". Notice how Terren remains silent on the matter? He feels the pressure, especially after he sees todays FGI. Come on, I'm not really going to parade around your house naked. Well not much at least.
Friday's FGI: 188
The weekly FGI average: 190.43
Good numbers to end the week. My friday weight is -6 from last Friday and the average is -2.57. This seems to verify that your body stores waste products and water for some unknown reason. I'm not starving myself by any stretch. Just eating sensibly again as well as not eating everything in sight.
Looks to be a hot and muggy weekend. Get out and ride early, drink lots of water, and remember to enjoy it all.
2 Comments:
At 7:34 AM,
shaggz said…
LOL - Nice one 3rd. party. I have a very strong suspicion of who YOU are, so be careful - I now have full control.
At 12:31 PM,
Anonymous said…
Multiplying ft/m with your pace (m/h) gives vertical feet per hour. It might be worth tracking. In true nerd fashion, I've been tracking some numbers of my own, now that I have a heart rate monitor. I multiply my avg heart rate (beats/min) with my pace (minutes/mile) to get beats/mile which turns out to be a pretty useful indicator of overall fitness (it's been slowly trending down), and fairly consistent despite workout intensity. It would work just as well with cycling as with running, although since you track speed, not pace, the calculation would be different but easy enough to work out.
And Norm I've been silent on the weight issue more or less to help keep your spirits up. I know how much of a motivating factor it is for you to try to catch up with me - and how depressing it would be to see the finish line actually receding into the distance.
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