Mesquite Rodeo Bike Ride

I participated in the 15th annual Mesquite Rodeo Bike Ride yesterday with my school's cycling club. It was amazing! This was my first organized bike ride so I wanted to take it easy and do the 33K. After about 13 miles I saw the sign for the turn off and decided to push myself and do the 50K instead. The ride through the country side was calm and relaxing. The atmospere was positive and inviting. And the people; all the volunteers were extremely friendly. After about 25 miles I broke a spoke on my rear wheel but I did not know until I was about to leave the final rest stop at 28.5 miles. After the techs did not have a spare spoke that was my size, I decided to call it a day. It was a personl record for distance for me. My previous high was 23.5 miles. So that puts my total mileage at 265 miles since May 12th. BTW, I am on the top right in the above picture.

As you can see by the storm clouds in the background, the weather was pretty interesting. After having several near 100* days and 20-30mph winds, the temps and riding conditions were quite enjoyable. It did not even rain believe it or not which was a relief to most, but I would have ridden anyways. Here is another picture of our group and again, I am on the right. Not bad for 291lbs!

Speaking of weight, I started the NutriSytem program on Tuesday. I have lost 10lbs in 5 days on this program now and cycling. As of this morning I weigh 290lbs. According to the scale my body fat percentage is 39.8%, water percentage is 42.6%, muscle mass percentage is 40.3% and bone percentage is 2.9%. Shortly after buying my scale I was 299.2lbs and my stats were 41.8%BF/41.9%H2O/39.5%M/2.8%B respectively. Just so you don't have to do the math, that means I have lost 9.2lbs total weight and 9.56lbs of body fat according to this scale. I weighed myself every morning after taking a shower. Check in next week when I hope to be at the 285lb mark!

My first blog--broke the 200 mile mark!

This morning I stepped on the scale and weighed in at 296.4lbs. I weighed 306lbs in late April so I guess that means I've lost about 10lbs this month. This week decided to take a classmate's advice and I ordered 5 weeks of food through NutriSystem. The weight could really start pouring off now. I have not been this "light" since I started school at Parker in January 2006.

With the encouraging news of my weight progress I decided to explore Lake Grapevine in Grapevine, TX. There was only a small stretch of road that was in view of the lake that crossed over the dam. I need to get a camera because the view is pretty nice up there. My ride got off to a rough start because the headwind was blowing pretty hard. As I was suffering, I watched the boats in the water and noticed the water conditions were pretty choppy down there, but I took solice that the ride back would be very comfortable. I rode highway 26 towards Grapevine and passed some nice shopping centers out there. I love the fact that I am exploring new areas and now I know of a few new places to check out when my family comes down to visit. I also passed some well known hotels including the Gaylord Texan. (http://www.gaylordhotels.com/gaylord-texan/) After coming to a dead end in an industrial park I did not want to stray from the main road and get lost so I turned around and headed back. My goal was to ride about 15-20 miles but I ended up with only about 14 miles, oh well. On my way back I hit a new personal record for top speed at 34.23mph; probably because of the tail wind. It also could have been my new drag reducing nike sleeveless jerset I bought last night to help me improve my nasty case of farmer tan and show off my new guns.

This evening I decided to hop on the bike and ride down to the local Vietnamese restaraunt since my nutrisystem meals did not come in yesterday. Its funny how if you have to do a little bit of work for your food, you realize how bad you really want it; imagine if you lived on a farm! I could have ordered pizza, but I wanted to eat something relatively healthy. It is exactly 2 miles from my door to their door. By the time I got home my odometer read 202 miles! I bought my bike (http://www.lemondbikes.com/bikes/road_racing/performance_aluminum/reno.php) on May 12th so in 20 days I have averaged 10 miles per day. If I continue this pace I will wind up logging over 3,650 miles in 1 year! I can actually see myself going over the 5,000 mile mark. My commute is 14 miles rountrip and I try to ride in at least 3-4 days per week.

My goal is to ride to school 4 days per week and go on a long bike ride every Saturday and eventually I would like to average over 100 miles per week. It would be great to move to an apartment that is about 10-12 miles away from school so I could increase my mileage. I am also trying to get ready for the Parker Ride for Wellness (http://www.parkercc.edu/parker_ride_for_wellness_2008.aspx) in late September. I would like to finish the 100k portion (60~miles) so I am going to have to start increasing my mileage on the the weekends; my longest ride was last weekend's 23.75 miles.