It's Official

 The image on the left came from the excellent Weightbot application for the iPhone. Okay, so I added some commentary overlays, but you get the point. So I'll keep posting my progress with screenshots from the application, and you can feel free to poke fun at me in the comments section.

So this is kinda strange. I've always considered myself to be pretty healthy. Even though I know I'm not in the best shape of my life or anything, it's kinda strange to see myself above the "Overweight" line. This is a brand new "ouch world" for me! And of course, we all know the way out of this world, more ouch. Like the hour I spent flogging myself on the Expresso bike at the Genentech gym last night. That was fun, but is sure did hurt. It especially hurt because even though I was pushing relatively hard, I finished 21st out of 39 riders to attempt the course nation wide this year. I guess when you spend your time reading about other people who are fast, you kinda feel like it rubs off on you. As it turns out... it doesn't. So, I'm doing my Power 90x (I even took my "before" pictures, but there's no way I'm posting them until I have some decent "after" pictures to put up next to them!), riding my bike, and watching what I eat. Tomorrow is another day on the Expresso bike, and I'm gonna have to do something drastic to help out my ego a bit.

New Year, Same Suffering

A brand new year, so it's time to see what kind of shape I'm in (cough...), so I decided to take a trip up Old La Honda road. You can see my ride info here.

So I managed to claw my way up to the top in 26:58. Not great, but better than I was expecting. It's clear that five days in the mile-high altitude in Albuquerque didn't make me into a super-climber (Possibly because of the stuffed sopaipillas and burritos I gorged myself on...). It was a little embarrassing how many times I was passed by other riders... when did that start to happen? Halfway up I noticed a salamander that had been flattened on the road, and I instantly related. When I reached the top, my glasses were fogged over, so I couldn't really see my time, but I figured I could just check it on my Garmin when I got home. Time for one more climb up OLH, this time at an easy pace. It's hard to believe that there is only three minutes between this:

and this:

The good news is that I only have to take 35 seconds off each month to break 20 minutes.