CYCOPATH

So my best friend and I tackled Daley Ranch the other day. Let’s just say it wasn’t a fun ride.

The place is gorgeous. Here are some pictures to prove it.

Yeah so super pretty right? Sure. Until the bitchass unleashes a can of whoop-ass on your innocent little legs (okay so my legs aren’t little…but they are innocent).

This is pretty much my best friend’s old mountain bike stomping grounds so she knows the place like the back of her hand. The trails are really loopy, sticky, and fun. There’s just about a 100-200 feet of climbing for every mile you do. So yeah…only that.

Let me put it in perspective. The day before we went on this ride I went on a road ride where I covered 12 miles in 47 min. There was 1200 ft of climbing. We went to Daley the next day. Did 6 miles with 1200 ft of climbing. In effing an 1:03. Half the mileage…whole hell of a lot longer time. Super frustrating.

My patient best friend keeps explaining to me how hard mountain biking is. I know this. I started cycling with mountain biking. I didn’t sit on a road bike until like 6 months ago. However, I never really understood the sheer stupidity that mountain biking is. It’s so hard, so grueling, and so killer you really need to be a sadist to do it. It’s gorgeous and its fun (on the way down) but man is it a bitch until you get good at it. There is such a big learning curve with this sport it’s not even funny. Road biking…pssh. Anyone can do it and get GOOD at it. It IS challenging in different ways and it is hard. But it is so much easier to learn (and I now know this from personal experience). It is so much easier to see improvement quickly on the road than it is on the mountain and that’s just weird to me…but kind of neat. It makes me proud that I can do both and do them fairly well (okay I still suck at mountain but I’m trying lol).

Anyways…gonna be a long couple of months…blah.

(PS thanks to Mountain Bike Bill for the pics!)

runningwithaltitude replied to your post: The secret (and the rotten truth)

If you want to lose weight, its simple burn more than you put in. No pills, no magic just a simple equation :0)

Yes. Very true. Intake is less than output. That’s the big thing. I just want people to realize how lucky they are that their problem is loosing a few pounds you know? :) 

Rant alert:

The more and more I read stuff here on Tumblr from amateur fitness guru’s and people on their way to becoming their “better selves”, the more I’ve discovered that everyone seems to be an expert on how to lose weight.

Eat more carbs, no carbs, eat all meat, go veg, eat 8 times a day, do intermittent fasting, LIQUIDS!, WATER!, use a laxative…really?

What’s the best way to lose weight? There’s really no answer.

It’s an age old question as of now, sadly. But it didn’t use to be. There used to be a time where fat was considered beautiful because it meant you were wealthy enough to be properly fed. Skinny was derided because it meant you were poor. Interesting. For some people in countries other than America, that’s still the case.

It really saddens me that I live in a place that is so focused on physical beauty. I am as guilty of this as any one of you and have fought to fit into that Hollywood box that is so heavily promoted on TV and through movies. But I don’t fit and I don’t think that this is something I should be ashamed of.

In this country, filled with people focused on looking either emaciated or being obese, I am a minority at being somewhere between the two. I’m not skinny, and I’m not really fat, and I apparently should get my ass in gear and get to the really ripped, skinny, not fat part right?

Wrong.

One thing I’m really involved in in my personal life is foreign affairs. I’m an avid news reader and I like to stay current on what’s going on in foreign countries, particularly Africa. I watch documentaries on child soldiers (yes long before Kony became “cool”) and have started to become increasingly invested in studying the history of African conflicts. Images that I can never get out of my head are of children with pot bellies, starving. Mothers so skinny they can’t pick up their children. Men so weak from malnurishment they can’t stand up. People in America want this shit for themselves when other less fortunate people would give anything for the security of three meals a day.

Yeah, yeah. You’ve all heard this before. Late night dinners with parents, you not finishing your food, you mom berating you, “There are children starving in Africa! Finish your broccoli!”. Yeah, Mom. But we don’t live in Africa do we? So why is that applicable at all to me? Well…maybe its not. But it damn well should be.

We all need to get over ourselves, myself included. We need to stop being so fixated on diet, exercise, and just get busy living. Take advantage of where you live and enjoy your life. Eat well, even if that means eating shit sometimes. Exercise when you want (if you love it, do it! if you hate it, just do enough to keep healthy). Stop trying to find the “secret” to health and just be healthy. Use common sense. Don’t eat Mickey D’s everyday. Don’t drink a liter of soda everyday. But most importantly, remember that everytime you look at yourself and deride your most likely healthy body, there is someone, SOMEWHERE, feeling the pains of hunger. There is someone counting their ribs (not because they want to). I know it’s an old comparison and yes, problems are all relative. But eff. Think about these people and their body problems. Then think about your own body problems. I’m sure there isn’t even a comparison. 

Be happy that you have some tight pants…it means that you have enough fat on you to fill them out.

So don’t get me wrong…I love cross training. I hate just riding my bike day in and day out. It gets boring as hell to me. I love being able to jump on a track and run a bit or even just walk. I love lifting weights. I love swimming. I love horseback riding. One thing I do not like however is body weight and jump training. Enter plyometrics from P90X. Eff…that…shit. I can’t move today. Literally. I have done this workout at least 6-8 times and every time I am just as sore as the last time I did it. I stretch every single time before I start. I stretch every single time after I finish. I drink a shit ton of water. AND I AM STILL EFFING SORE AS HELL! Seriously…my ass hurts, my quads KILL, my calves are screaming, and my lower back feels pretty bad too. Every step I take is painful. To me…this isn’t normal.

I know that a good workout means you’ll probably be sore afterward. I get that. I respect that. However, I really don’t like being debilitatingly sore and I think that sometimes this is what P90X does to you. I like the program a lot for the most part. I think it’s good for people who are already in shape to do as a body weight/jump training workout. However, I really dislike the fact that Tony Horton pawns this off as a workout program for someone who isn’t ALREADY in shape. I workout 5-6 times a week. I ride 40-50 miles a week on my bike. I ride my horse 2x a week. I walk constantly during work. I lift weights at least twice a week. I am not an out of shape person and I struggle with that workout. It’s not cool to say ”hey even if you’re like 50 lbs over weight try this program…you can get cut.” I know they warn you that it’s extreme or whatever…but seriously, its pretty extreme. A lot more than they let you believe in commericals. Okay sorry. That was a rant on P90X. Not my point.

 Anyways…crosstraining. I like crosstraining. But from now on, I refuse to crosstrain to the point where I can no longer do the activities that I enjoy the day after. It’s not fun and I don’t like it. The end.

are way too cool for me. I learned this last night. Should not even be allowed to hang out with them they are so cool. Love them to death and happy that they seem to love me back a little bit. Praise God for good people.

BTdubs…decided on the 12 hour. Gonna do it. It’s gonna get my ass in shape and its a good goal. Care…my mountain bike roommate and “trainer” says we need to start doing at least one 3 hour ride a week. I need to work on climbing about 4-5000 ft a ride as well. Hopefully I can actually do that or else this will be a short lived dream. I basically need to teach myself to really love climbing and love the push. And I need to brush up on my techy climbing skills as well. In short…the next three months are going to be hell.

Been getting into a groove lately. Yesterday I went on a quick 12 mile ride with a friend to get her set up on her new bike (stoked for her!) and then me and my roomie went on a mt bike ride for about an hour in the heat. Despite dropping a gear a couple of times and having to step out, I still climbed the climb I normally do in about 30 minutes in 31 which shows that I am making progress despite what I might think about myself. Clocks don’t lie. I’ve only done about 19 miles this week but tonight I’ll move it up to 34 and hopefully by Saturday I’ll have about 50 miles for the week. That’s a good amount of mileage for a week’s worth of riding. It’s also why I freaking love summer.

I’d really like to do the 12 hour race coming up in November. It’ll be brutal and my crotch probably won’t feel the same ever again but I’d like to try it. It scares me and I it makes me feel like I can’t do it which is always a good reason to try and do something. We’ll see how it goes :)