170 Days Until RAAM Start

cycling, RAAM, Race Across America, ultra cycling | UltraRob | Thursday, December 22nd, 2005 at 11:38 am

It is now 170 days until the start of RAAM 2006. In a way this seems like a long time but considering the training and everything else I need to do, it seems too short. I consider November 1st as the start of my training and I rode my bike 21 times in November and hiked once.

I haven’t been worried about getting lots of training time in but just trying to be consistent. In August I was working way too much and only was on the bike 12 times. I still was able to ride a RAAM qualifying time at the Adirondack 540 in September but certainly wasn’t the way to train so I’m trying not to let that happen leading up to RAAM.

This month I haven’t been as consistent as in November because of some very cold weather and being sick. Once night it was -16 degrees when we went to bed which is the coldest it’s been in nearly 10 years. I also was sick and didn’t feel like doing any training most of last week so I guess the timing of the cold weather wasn’t bad. Yesterday it was in the 50’s and it is again today so I’m back to training outside on the bike.

As always I weigh too much. One of my big challenges is to lose 20 lbs before RAAM. It should be doable but will require more to be very disciplined with my eating. I lost over 20 lbs a view years ago by tracking everything I ate in DietPower but I gained it back last winter when I took 4 months off the bike to gut a third of the house and remodel it.

My thyroid doesn’t really work any more and although I’m on medication it’s so easy to gain weight and really hard to get rid of it. I’m not far from being obese by the BMI measurement but I’ve always been bulky. When I was in high school, one of the employees at the local bike shop kept telling me I should be a body builder instead of a cyclist but I love being outside too much to ever consider doing that.

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