9 posts tagged “'bent”

Yesterday the wife made plans to take the kids to her dad's place. I had stuff to do but finished a lot of it in the morning in time to go with. I figured we'd be able to leave the kids with the grandparents so we could do a bit of oven shopping. Last week our ancient oven went a$$ up on us and we haven't had time to properly shop for a replacement.

Anyway, the wife let them know that I was coming and her dad said,

"Oh Art's coming? I better go get a pie..."

Such a reputation I have. Truth be told I don't even like pie. I suspect he desired pie for dessert and used my appearance as an excuse to obtain said pie. I heard he got chips and dip for me too but they didn't make an appearance, thank goodness. I am after all on kind of a diet here for my belly problems.

Of course they managed to stuff me full of food. Breaded pork chops, mashed potatoes, gravy, and an enormous pile of broccoli. The broccoli was more self defense on my part. I had a huge helping with dinner then finished off the bowl. I'm on a hunt for fiber anyway and figured I might not want dessert if I was completely full to the gills with broccoli. Didn't help, still had a fat piece of peach pie with an ungodly mound of miracle whip. I think they call it miracle whip because it's a miracle one doesn't explode from eating it.

Yeah so eating frenzy. The final count was almost 4k calories for the day. Two days worth of eating.

And so I came home, jumped on the bike, and did my first 2.5 hour ride, burning 2765 calories and riding 40.2 miles. Yessir, I set my $hit straight for the day. I fell off the bike around 11:30pm. I don't believe I've ever been more thirsty in my entire life. I think if I'm gonna go on these endurance runs I'm going to have to bring some water along. So much for easing back right? This was kind of a special situation in my mind at least.

I did manage to take Friday off completely, no riding. I came home, ate dinner, put the kids to bed and fell asleep in front of the tube. I slept about 12 hours. Not sure what might have happened if I rode on Friday, might have fallen asleep on the bike and ridden through the night or something completely sick like that.

Alright, so, I use this website called calorieking.com to keep a food and exercise log and track just about everything about my diet. Very cool website, very useful. Here's a breakdown of food & exercise calories along with the daily net over the last two weeks:

Calorie Intake

Daily averages and breakdowns

I'm a little high on fat intake and could probably bump up the carbs to replace the fat. I think the key here is to add complex carbs to the mix, fiber stuff, dense fiber to fuel the machine.

Nutrients

I mean really, the fiber is way in the basement. Gotta have fibery carbs and a hair less fat and I should be good.

Last night I had a fairly small dinner, helped put the kids to bed, and crashed out exhausted from lack of sleep and too much exercise. As I lay in bed thinking on the edge of sleep, I came up with a brilliant idea. See when I ride the bike I use my video ipod and I put it on the bookstand on the bike computer. Thing is it's a little too far away and I get a bit of odd glare from the screen, not to mention the screen is tiny at that distance. So sometimes when the action onscreen heats up I'll hold the ipod. The problem with that is I'm riding my butt off and the ipod is jiggling all over the place, making me a bit motion sick

So the idea was to use one of my cymbal stands to hold the ipod. I pulled one with a long boom out of storage and set it up. I then took a metal jourgensen clamp and drilled a hole through the metal shank. I removed half of the cymbal mount and bolted the jourgensen to the end of the stand. Perfect. The nice thing is this jourgensen has good padding and a very fine grip control that allows me to secure the ipod without crushing it.

Perfect. Now my ipod would be safe and secure without being too far away for me to see and without me holding it. I think I wound up positioning it about a foot away from my face. I am so, so very smart. Of course I couldn't rig this thing and NOT try it out, thus my 4th 2 hour ride in 4 days. That's 120 miles.

When I was done I was, for all intents and purposes, transcendentally exhausted. I can't even describe it. The wife said she was worried and I told her I'd scale back to an hour a night, saving the big rides for the weekends. Which is perfect since today is Friday. But really I need to scale back. Last night I kept waking up with the feeling that my legs were just gone, like the skin and bones were there but there was nothing inside, which can't be good. I mean it feels really good but, you know, it's probably excessive.

Well I managed to roll through another two hour session on the recumbent bike last night, racking up another 30 miles, bringing me to 90 miles in 3 days. Yay for me. Only problem is I got a late start and didn't finish until almost midnight, had to get up for work and all, and now I'm really pretty much for the most part utterly and completely crushed. I'm so damned tired. It's gonna be one of those get through the day at all costs, try not to talk to anyone days because I'm completely bushed.

I've got my 9:30 daily call coming up shortly and really I'm gonna need some coffee. I'm not switching back, just using it for it's medicinal and awakative properties.

Wow look at that, my lack of rest has ushered forth a new word... "awakative".

Last night I was still a bit sore from lifting a few days back so I jumped on the recumbent bike. I watched an episode of Battlestar Galactica ("Unfinished Business", an ok episode) then switched over to music. Not sure what happened but all the songs I picked were really good and got me into quite a good frame of mind. I rolled for two hours for a grand total of 32.6 miles, a new personal best.

I'm thinking I might ride across the U.S. on my bike by plotting my mileage on a map, maybe start in Maine and ride to LA. Could be fun. Might be a good idea for a Google Maps mashup.

It's weird but so much is going on I've completely not mentioned anything about my whole workout thing. I've been working out regularly for two years now. I was lifting weights pretty regularly until the beginning of October then kind of layed off on stuff because I wasn't feeling well.

That's when I found out about the whole stomach thing. The doc told me I needed to get back to working out, specifically recommending I ride the recumbent bike everyday. Which I've done ever since except while on vacation and when I got that bug a few weeks back.

I was super busy the last few days of my vacation. I got a really good deal on a new weight cage that was a closeout model from last year. It's a big upgrade from my old model as it has a dip attachment and lat/rowing extension. It's much sturdier and has spring loaded gliding catches for the weights and safety bars. No more pulling out the pegs and setting pins manually.

The garage and workout space was really cluttered so as I setup the new cage I purchased several large shelving units, got rid of all the old crappy shelving, and cleaned out the garage. I even tore out the old utility bench and put new shelving there. The garage looks pretty darned good, much less clutter and plenty of workout space. I've got the cage and my weights arranged nicely with plenty of room all around. Feels good in there.

So I'm back to lifting again and I'm still riding the bike. Working out is becoming a favored pasttime for me now that I can't drink anymore. My Weekend nights used to pretty much be me drinking until all hours in front of the television. Now instead I ride the bike. I usually ride for an hour each night when not lifting and then ride longer on the weekends for the fun of it. This Friday I rode the 'bent 30.9 miles in 2 hours while watching Battlestar Galactica on my iPod. It was bliss.

The result is that I've lost 22lbs since sometime around the beginning of November, pretty much a complete miracle for yours truly through the holiday stretch. And I feel darned good. The stomach thing still gets me though as I haven't completely changed my diet but it's way better than when I started out.

And it was quite fun. Went to Grampa's place and spent time with The Wife's Stepbrothers and their families. It was cool this year with all the kids. We had 4 grandkids in attendance with 2 absent this year. Perhaps next year we'll have the gang all together.

I ate my ass off, which I think might be some kind of oxymoron or paradox or something. It's the most I've eaten in like two months. I had all kinds of hors d'oeuvres, several sodas, half a slab of ribs, a stuffed shell, ice cream cake, and a frosted gingerbread cookie. In anticipation of this culinary massacre I rode the 'bent this morning for an hour and honestly I'm thinking I'll ride for another hour shortly. Gotta get some of this goo out of me and that's the best way.

So tomorrow we'll get our first real xmas tree. The Wife and I have never had a full-sized one. We've either never had the room or the will or the reason to get one. Now that the kids are a bit older we're finally going to do it. We have a small tree that we got a few years back that we put up but this year we're going whole hog, getting a nice big real tree for upstairs. We'll have to get lights and tinsel and whatnot but I think we've got plenty of ornaments stashed away that we've inherited over time.

We're also going to hit one of the local xmas light displays with the kids. It'll be granny-pants lame but the kids will love it and that makes it all worthwhile.

We'll be having xmas day here which I'm a little apprehensive about since to my knowledge we've done no planning for whatsoever. I gotta talk to The Wife, see if she's hooked anything up yet. If not tomorrow will be a shade nuttier than I'd thought.

God man this whole holiday thing is like trying to navigate a minefield at night, in the rain, without a map or a flashlight while dragging two spare tires and wearing pink tap shoes. But for the first time in as long as I can remember I'm actually enjoying it.

Yes, so we're home. Thank goodness. I unloaded the car, unpacked everything, ordered, picked up, and ate a pizza, bathed one of the two hooligans and now I am done. Feels good to be home. I still have time off, don't go back to work until 1/2 so by my count I've got exactly "plenty of time" to stay up too late watching old Star Trek The Next Generation reruns until my eyes bleed.

Yes, I realize that watching STTNG (and abbreviating it like that) is as gay as anything but that's the way things are for me these days. What with the not drinking, sensible eating, and exercising and all, minivan driving and eating Quiznos Classic Cobb salads and everything... it would seem that the life of yours truly is experiencing some kind of change.

I'm also pretty darned stoked to spend time with the kids. Yep, I've spent the last 6 days in a cabin in the wild Northwoods of Wisconsin with them and my mother in law and I had a great time, perhaps the most fun I've ever had up there. This in spite of the fact that I only actually skied once this trip. The snow was kind of pootastic so we pretty much bailed on it.

But, The Girl took three skiing lessons and made a ton of progress. On her second lesson she was on the beginner chair lift on the Big Bird run at Big Powderhorn (the same run and lift that I learned on about 10 years ago). I wasn't there, was back at the house watching The Boy and Heidi but just hearing about her on the lift made my heart jump into my throat. She's not even 4 yet and she was riding a real-deal ski lift then skiing down a real-deal ski run. Holy smokes.

Anyway, its been 6 days since I've ridden my beloved recumbent bike. I'm gonna go blast on that mofo for awhile, burn off some of this this latte and that wondrous lou malnati's.