Introduction
Why would anyone want to write or read a blog anymore, especially about a fat, marginally talented cyclist that competes in a small, backwater league in what's already a fringe sport?
I will only venture to answer the first question, since I am not privy to the inner workings of anyone else's mind, and have enough trouble with my own. Having written a few articles for online magazines on various subjects that I have limited expertise in, I find that I gravitate towards this medium more readily than the disposable stuff posted on Facebook, Twitter, and various interweb forums. I guess I'm old-fashioned that way.
I grew up a skinny kid. When I say skinny, I mean people were worried about me skinny. I had the metabolism of a hummingbird, and maintained a fairly active lifestyle. Back in the days before the internet, PlayStations, and high-fructose corn syrup, that was easy. I pretty much ate whatever I wanted, in vast quantities. I rode a bike everywhere until I reached the age where it wasn't cool to do it anymore, and then I either walked or borrowed (and bashed) my mom's car. A bike was a means to an end, nothing more. I did attend a couple stages of the Tour de Trump when it rolled though town, but I was there strictly to hang around with the girls that were volunteering. I think I barely noticed when the riders came by. Some of the biggest names in pro cycling were rolling by yards away, but I was too busy working through my late-teens/early 20s hormones to be bothered. All legs and lungs, with 4% or less body fat, I would have been a pretty good rider back then.
After a protracted life lesson about my competence as a music education major, I joined the Air Force. I actually gained 10 pounds in basic training, as my activity level went down and I started packing on more upper body muscle. I was still eating anything I wanted, and over the years my activity level steadily decreased as my interests gravitated towards pastimes that didn't require aerobic effort. In a little over 10 years, I gained almost 100 pounds. It happened so gradually that I didn't notice. Mentally I was still a skinny kid. OK, maybe I was "a few pounds overweight", but it wouldn't take anything to drop those and be the lean guy I once was.
Then one day I punched my numbers into a BMI calculator and was surprised to find that I was obese. Not a little obese, but a full-on fat-fat-fatty. I tried to use the all-too-common justification that "these numbers are flawed", but the reality is that I was the kind of person that we used to tease when I was a kid. Suddenly my body image changed from that of a skinny kid to that of a fat person.
I tried all sorts of exercises, and probably did more harm than good, but none of them really stuck. Then one day, completely out of the blue, I bought a hybrid bike at REI. I still don't know what motivated me. I started riding to work and doing the occasional longer ride, and without changing my very poor eating habits or riding with any real intensity, I dropped 20 pounds. Boom. The more I rode, the better I felt. I could tie my shoes without gasping for breath (don't laugh, it was that bad). My abilities in alpine ski racing, which is my winter sport, took a quantum leap forward as I finally had the strength and endurance to do what the sport demanded of me. I was still overweight and borderline obese, but I had turned a corner and I was hooked.
A decade later, I'm still too fat for this sport, mainly because I tend to eat all of the wrong sorts of things. However, I haven't felt this good since my early twenties. I credit it all to the bike, because without it I would have never overcome the inertia that defined my life. My life is much more than riding around on a child's toy in tight pants, but I'd be lying if I didn't say it wasn't a big part of it.
Life is better when I ride, so I keep riding. Simple as that.
I will only venture to answer the first question, since I am not privy to the inner workings of anyone else's mind, and have enough trouble with my own. Having written a few articles for online magazines on various subjects that I have limited expertise in, I find that I gravitate towards this medium more readily than the disposable stuff posted on Facebook, Twitter, and various interweb forums. I guess I'm old-fashioned that way.
I grew up a skinny kid. When I say skinny, I mean people were worried about me skinny. I had the metabolism of a hummingbird, and maintained a fairly active lifestyle. Back in the days before the internet, PlayStations, and high-fructose corn syrup, that was easy. I pretty much ate whatever I wanted, in vast quantities. I rode a bike everywhere until I reached the age where it wasn't cool to do it anymore, and then I either walked or borrowed (and bashed) my mom's car. A bike was a means to an end, nothing more. I did attend a couple stages of the Tour de Trump when it rolled though town, but I was there strictly to hang around with the girls that were volunteering. I think I barely noticed when the riders came by. Some of the biggest names in pro cycling were rolling by yards away, but I was too busy working through my late-teens/early 20s hormones to be bothered. All legs and lungs, with 4% or less body fat, I would have been a pretty good rider back then.
After a protracted life lesson about my competence as a music education major, I joined the Air Force. I actually gained 10 pounds in basic training, as my activity level went down and I started packing on more upper body muscle. I was still eating anything I wanted, and over the years my activity level steadily decreased as my interests gravitated towards pastimes that didn't require aerobic effort. In a little over 10 years, I gained almost 100 pounds. It happened so gradually that I didn't notice. Mentally I was still a skinny kid. OK, maybe I was "a few pounds overweight", but it wouldn't take anything to drop those and be the lean guy I once was.
Then one day I punched my numbers into a BMI calculator and was surprised to find that I was obese. Not a little obese, but a full-on fat-fat-fatty. I tried to use the all-too-common justification that "these numbers are flawed", but the reality is that I was the kind of person that we used to tease when I was a kid. Suddenly my body image changed from that of a skinny kid to that of a fat person.
I tried all sorts of exercises, and probably did more harm than good, but none of them really stuck. Then one day, completely out of the blue, I bought a hybrid bike at REI. I still don't know what motivated me. I started riding to work and doing the occasional longer ride, and without changing my very poor eating habits or riding with any real intensity, I dropped 20 pounds. Boom. The more I rode, the better I felt. I could tie my shoes without gasping for breath (don't laugh, it was that bad). My abilities in alpine ski racing, which is my winter sport, took a quantum leap forward as I finally had the strength and endurance to do what the sport demanded of me. I was still overweight and borderline obese, but I had turned a corner and I was hooked.
A decade later, I'm still too fat for this sport, mainly because I tend to eat all of the wrong sorts of things. However, I haven't felt this good since my early twenties. I credit it all to the bike, because without it I would have never overcome the inertia that defined my life. My life is much more than riding around on a child's toy in tight pants, but I'd be lying if I didn't say it wasn't a big part of it.
Life is better when I ride, so I keep riding. Simple as that.
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