A New Direction of a Directionless Blog

So I'm sure that a lot of people have done this before, and probably have done it much better than I ever could but I thought I should give it a try.  I'm also hoping that the new direction of the blog will cause me to post a bit more often then I normally would.  "What is this new direction and why should we care?"  "Can a blog with previously no direction change direction?"

To answer these questions simply, progress tracking, you shouldn't, and no.  I am going to be posting my progress for fitness, weight, and other health related things.  You might not care, but I said before in here, I hope you can at least get some laughs and since I'm either at work, on the bike, in the basement or in bed, it can be a nice way for some of you to keep track of me... which brings us back to that you probably shouldn't care.  And since I was only 4 posts in on the blog and I'm already changing the direction, I guess we could just call it finding a direction.  Now for the reason for changing:

Milestones

I've recently hit a few major milestone in my training and in my life.  I've been hovering just about 200 lbs for last few weeks and the other morning when I stepped on the scale I did it!  I was below 200lbs for the first time since I was poor and emaciated from living like a fucking hippie in Colorado.  Since that doesn't really count, we'll say it is the first time I've been below 200lbs since the start of my freshman year of college 2002.  Another milestone is that the other week I was on the bike for an hour and covering close to 20 mile and I like to do I final sprint up the slight incline of 3rd ave going West from Olantangy River Road.  Well I was able to hit 30 MPH, which going that fast on a downhill feels pretty awesome, but on a flat to very slightly uphill... it felt amazing.  There are some other things that seem to be looking up as well in my life and I think this was a great time to re-asses my life and my goals and start working towards some new ones.

Goal #1:  Get to 190 lbs.  I know I didn't always look it, but through college I was in the 220-230 range, so a total loss of 40lbs over a few years would be pretty awesome.  Cycling has been the greatest motivational factor in losing the weight.  When I'm getting dropped of the back of the group by a bunch of 140 pounders, I feel fat and slow... because comparatively that's exactly what I am.  So I think that with my power to weight ratio as is now, I could do pretty well around 190.  More to come on how exactly I'll be working toward this.

Goal #2: Eat lots of fiber.

Goal #3: My hopes for winning a road race this year have been broken, but something I really think I'll be able to accomplish (an important part of setting S.M.A.R.T. goals, I'll visit this later too) is placing top 10 in a cyclocross race this year.  Also since I'm not a totally rookie in cyclocross, I'd like to invite some friends to come out and watch/cheer me on and have a nice cold brew waiting for me at the finish.   I'll worry about setting road racing goals next year.

Goal #4: ACTUALLY WRITE BLOG POST MORE OFTEN THAN ONCE IN A BLUE MOON.  mmmmmmmmmmmmm... blue moon......mmmmmmmmmm.

So that's about all for today.  I had a pretty good training ride today where I almost threw up a few times.  That's when you know it's good.  I weighed in after dinner at 204lbs and I looked soft in mirror.  I should have a weigh in tomorrow morning and write about that and hill sprints tomorrow night.  Keep reading, I promise I will write more.  If you like what you read, leave a comment so I know someone it paying attention.  And Brendan, you can look for more spelling errors and grammatical error too.  Leave them in the comments so everyone knows where I messed up. 

Keep keeping it real.

Columbus Clydesdale