With all the riding I did over the weekend, I had time to zone out and let my mind wander. I think it was on Sunday on my way back from Guffey I started wondering whether I’d be really tan on my right side but not my left by the end of RAAM. If I spend 12 days riding generally east, the amount of sunlight each side of my body gets has to be considerably different. I think the reason I started thinking about it is that Sunday was our first really warm day.

Today it felt like summer. Normally April is our 2nd snowiest month of the year but it’s been warm and dry so far. I already have a pretty weird tan line from a little gap between my glove and my ID and medical info bracelet from RoadID. I’ve said it before but I’m going to say it again. It’s a dangerous world out there and you really should have some kind of ID and info on you when you’re out riding, running, or whatever. It was really brought home recently when a friend had a really scary close call on a section of road that seems relatively safe.

I finally added a link to the Pikes Peak Cam so you can see the mountain that I can see the majority of the time I’m riding. I ride by the building the cam is on all the time. The only thing that would make the view better would be if it were at the Garden of the Gods Visitor Center so you could see the red rocks in the foreground. I also have added a graphic of the local weather conditions above the links. I also added a countdown to the start of RAAM both in the header and on the right.

As planned I headed into the mountain on Sunday. The temperature was well above normal and I started in short sleeves and pretty quickly pulled my knee warmers off. When I got to Woodland Park at a little over 8,000 feet I did put them back on for a little while but then took them off and never had to put them back on. I rode to Guffey and back taking some county roads. There’s very little traffic and the scenery is great.

Dropping into Guffey is always fun although I had a headwind so I only hit 52 mph. I’ve hit 60 mph on the hill before. The only bad part about it is coming back up the climb. It’s not that long so it isn’t too bad but it does hurt. I stopped and had a Coke on the patio of the bar in town. It’s a cool, little mountain town that for the most part seems to be stuck a couple decades ago.

As always the ride back was fun as it’s a lot more downhill than up. I did a little loop through the Garden of the Gods and hills on the west side of town before heading home. I ended up with 133 miles with 8983 feet of climbing and an on bike average of 15.4 mph.

Monday was the day to head out to the east where it is flat and boring. Even though I’m not a great climber, I still rather go into the mountains than ride out on the plains. The forecast was for it to be windy with it increasing in the afternoon. That definitely is not good news for riding out in the grasslands where there’s nothing to stop the wind.

I had a good tailwind on the way out and averaged 21 mph for the 78 miles to Limon. When I turned around, the wind was strong but wasn’t terrible. About 30 miles later though, I was struggling to keep my speed at 8 mph on the flat. At one point I even went down under a bridge few a couple minutes just to get the wind noise out of my ears. My mouth kept drying out so I was drinking quite a bit. I heard on the news after I got back that the humidity had dropped below 5%! I was going so slow I ended up running out of water but had some concentrated HEED and Perpetuem to sip on.

I knew that once I got to Calhan I’d have 8 miles of cross-wind so I figured I could speed up and get a little break but was worried that I still might not make it back by dark. Peyton is where the road curves and would be straight in to the wind. When I got there the flags were still blowing pretty hard straight at me but weren’t making snapping sounds and shaking the flag poles. I actually was able to hold a pretty decent pace. Once I got into town there wasn’t much wind and I got home just as it got dark. It took just under 4 hours to get to Limon and over 7 hours to get back. Limon is only 800 feet lower so most of the speed difference was from the wind.

I got in 159 miles with only 3901 feet of climbing which is about as flat as it gets around here. My on bike average was 15.6 mph.

After spending 9 hours in a meeting today, I left before it was over so I could get an interval workout in. It was really hard to get motivated since I was pretty brain dead. Soon after I started riding, it sleeted for a few minutes but didn’t last long. After getting warmed up, I didn’t feel too bad and started up Rossmere Street. This is a street that there’s no such thing as riding it easy. It goes straight up and hurts no matter how fit I am. I think it’s about 6 minutes to the top and I was only doing 4 minute intervals so I just turned around and went back down and spun for a few minutes before heading back up. I was really hurting the last time up although I still made it the same distance up the hill. I got in 1700 feet of climbing in just over an hour of riding. I hate this kind of workout but it’s the best way to get faster.

Yesterday was the first Wednesday lunch time training race of the year. It’s pretty informal and everyone just shows up at noon at a spot. We ride to the top of the hill and the race starts. We do 3 laps and the finish line is where the pavement changes from a lighter color to a darker color at the top of the hill. There was a turn out of 9 riders which is good considering it was the first week. Too many more than that and it gets a little scary on open streets.

I felt good each time up the climb and rode well compared to the other riders. The last time up the hill 2 guys were off the front but not by too far. I was in a group of 4 and picked up the pace to see how many I could drop. I figured at least 1 or 2 would hang and it turned out 2 did. I attacked near the top and dropped one guy but the other guy counter attacked and I couldn’t respond. I was happy with my 4th place. The race took me 37 minutes and 33 seconds with an average heart rate of 170 and a max of 194.

Saturday I meet up with about a dozen other guys from Pikes Peak Velo for a fast paced ride out to Elbert. I got Bob and Brad to continue on with me to Kiowa and then across to Franktown and Castle Rock and then back 105 through Palmer Lake. We had started by going out to Peyton instead of taking the direct route to Elbert which I think ended up adding about 10 more miles than what I had thought the ride would be. We kept a good pace until we had to slow a little on 105 because Brad was starting to hurt. The other 2 stopped at Bob’s house north of town and got about 120 miles in. I went on through Garden of the Gods and Manitou before I headed home. I ended up with 143 miles with 6499 feet of climbing and on bike average speed of 18.3 mph.

Sunday I only did 42 miles but it was with the 10:00 Acacia Park group ride so it was hard. I had taken a pull and dropped to mid-pack in the Air Force Academy when I realized the group in front of me had totally blown apart. I put in a long, hard pull with a couple guys on my wheel and we picked up another few guys that had blown out of the groups in front of us. When I dropped to the back of the group, I had used too much and barely was able to hang on. We caught the 2nd group but weren’t able to pull the lead group of 5 or 6 back. I was very happy to be with the group I was in since I was mid-pack when things broke up. After the climb up to the back side, the guards wouldn’t let us through because 2 of the guys with military IDs had disappeared along with several other riders. We still had a group of about 20 and they only wanted to let 9 guys in with the one military ID we had. We then tried getting back in on Stadium but the guards there said the same thing. We went out North Gate and I managed to hang with the lead group back in to town execpt when 2 guys broke away but nobody else could go with them either. We caught them at a traffic light.

This week I’m stuck in meetings from 9 to 5 every day so I can’t get out for my normal lunch rides. I’m also being fed food that I’m sure has way more calories than I should have. I guess I should take my own lunch in so I can eat healthier.

I like to eat and unless I’m riding a lot I end up gaining weight. Even if I’m riding a lot, I have to be careful. I think part of it is genetic. It’s frustrating to see how much some other people can eat and not gain weight. I’m on medication for hypothyroidism and so are both of my parents and my sister. I think another problem is I get used to eating quite a bit when I’m riding a lot and when I have an easy week or take a couple months to remodel my house, I keep on eating as though I’m riding 10 or more hours a week.

The only way I’ve been able to consistently lose weight has been to count calories. The more accurate the better but studies have shown that just the act of keeping track of what you eat helps you get back on what you eat. I’ve been using DietPower to do it. At first it took a little while to log everything but now I have it so I can log everything for a day in about 5 minutes. Although DietPower has a lot of foods in its database including brand name foods, I still had to enter some of my common things such as all the Hammer Nutrition/E-caps fuels and supplements that I use.

With DietPower you set your weight goal for a certain date and it calculates your calorie budget for each day. It also works if you want to gain weight. It starts out with a metabolic rate calculated from your current weight. It can then calculate a more accurate rate based on how much you eat, calories burned in exercise, and how your weight changes. A pound of weight is equal to 3500 calories. It took a little tweaking to get the number of calories burned per hour on the bike right. When I didn’t have it right, I’d see a big swing in my metabolic rate after doing some extra long rides since DietPower assumes any calories not accounted for from eating, exercising, or weight change is from your metabolic rate. DietPower also allows you to check what popular diet plan you are using such as Weight Watchers, South Beach, Zone, Slim-fast, eDiets and more. It uses that to give suggestions on how to improve your diet but I haven’t used that feature so I’m not sure exactly how it works.

My weight peaked out at 197 in December. Saturday morning I weighed in at 179 and after my hard 143 mile ride on Saturday, I weighed in at 178 on Sunday morning. Saturday was the official weigh in day for B5 Challenge. I did Ok for the month but would have been better if I hadn’t had so much trouble cutting my calories after Hell Week. I got used to eating 6,000 plus calories a day and it was hard to cut back to where I needed to. You can see a nice spike in my weight in March from it. A month ago I was leading the pack in the B5 Challenge. In a few days, last month’s results should be posted and I’ll see where I am. The thing I really care about is it motivating me to keep losing the weight. I really don’t want to go below the low 170s before RAAM since I’ll need some reserves for that.