A Messy Saturday – And An Unexpected Probblem…

Embracing the Sucky

You can see by the picture, today didn’t turn out quite like it was supposed to according to the weather report.  That’s me and my running buddy Dennis…  I rode down to the running club and beat the rain by about 15 minutes – we ran all 7.2 miles with it either pouring or sprinking – we earned our man-cards today. I’ve run into another problem that I wasn’t counting on though.  When I arrived at the running club I weighed in as I do every week and I’d dropped another 2-1/2 pounds, I’m down to 153.6.  When I started road cycling (as opposed to riding my mountain bike) I was hoovering between 156 and 158 and I was perfectly happy there.  I stopped by the bike shop today to order some brake pads and asked Matt about it – he laughed and asked how close I was to the 2 lb per inch rule (A typical pro climber weighs 2 lbs for every inch, that would be 144 lbs)…  I explained that this is all well and good, but I really don’t want to look like Andy Schleck – he’s awesome and all, but that boy is way too skinny.  I’ve got some research to do on this, but he said it’s just a matter of eating more of the right stuff, though he didn’t know what the right stuff is, he suggested possibly upping the protein.  I’ve been trying to manage my weight for the last year and rather than trying to micro-manage this, I’m going to simply try to eat more – maybe a little better breakfast, a standard lunch and then I’ll make sure and double up on dinner and see how that goes.  I can tell you, having to learn to eat more is an interesting problem to have.  I started at lunch today before I really thought it over and managed to stuff down about 3,000 calories.  I’m going to double up on dinner too.  The major problem, as I see it, is that I got used to heating enough to keep my weight neutral when I was putting in the 13-16 mile daily rides but when I started ramping that up with 25’s, 35’s and 40’s on a regular basis, what I’m used to eating just isn’t enough.  I’m also going to start looking into some more intense weight training. Now, there’s another option here – I could cut down on my mileage, but that’s just not going to happen.