Took advantage of a hole in the storm system and got in a very quick 7 mile ride with total time of 24:15 for an average speed of 17.34 mph.

Got back to my house just as the rain picked up again. Glad I got to take advantage. It was a very short ride, but I pushed pretty hard and got my speed up, and heart rate - and that's all it's really about.

Didn't post after yesterday's ride, so this is a 2-fer. After not cycling for 3 days over the weekend, my body was well recovered - but I'd done a good bit of destructive dieting over the weekend as well at CigarFest 2009. So the ride to Norfolk and back was desperately needed.

Today, I intended to push the distance a little further, and also wound up heading in a new direction - south. the ride took me down South Canton road through Crary Mills, across 68, up Butternut Ridge Rd., and then back home on 56 through Hannawa Falls.

22.4 miles in 1:37 for an average speed of 13.8 MPH.

The original plan would have taken me down Bagdad Rd. instead of S. Canton Rd., and up County Rte 28 instead of Butternut Ridge Rd for a total distance of 25.0 miles - but I missed one turn, and then lost track of where I was, so I took a road I knew instead.

Oh well, time to clean up, and maybe have a cigar to reward myself.

And on the 7'th day... he made it back to his original distance and original speed. Today's ride took me 20 miles to Hotel Grande in Norfolk, and then home again. Round trip was 1:28 minutes for an average speed of 13.6 MPH.

Definitely feel as though I could have gone further - will push it a little more tomorrow, and then hopefully be up around 25 or 30 miles when I get back to it after a weekend off.

For now, though, time to take a shower, cook some dinner, and then off to open mic night at La Casbah

Since the weather was pretty crappy today, and I'm not going to get in a bike ride, I thought I'd let the engineer in me take over and run some numbers regarding getting back into shape.

So, here's the fundamental logic behind my routine. The human body burns some number of calories every day, just by keeping itself alive, and it burns additional calories through any additional physical activities - walking around, exercising, etc. If you want to lose weight, you must maintain what's called a caloric deficit - in other words you must consume fewer calories than you burn.

So the first thing I did was calculate an estimate of how many calories a day I need, called my Resting Metabolic Rate. Note: resting metabolic rate is what most people mean when they reference basil metabolic rate. BMR is the energy required by the body to keep itself alive, period. RMR is the energy used by the body at a state of slacking off. What's the difference? Well, for one, RMR accounts for energy used digesting food, where BMR requires your digestive system to be "shut down" (after a 12 hour fast, it has nothing to do). RMR provides a more accurate estimate of your caloric requirements sitting at your desk job all day long.

Unfortunately, though, there are several commonly used ways of calculating RMR. Many only take into account your body weight - and these are the most inaccurate. More accurate estimates use your body weight, height and age. These are the equations commonly used in online calculators. While fairly accurate, neither take into account your body-fat-percentage. If you are very muscular, the equations will under-estimate your caloric requirements, and if you are over-weight, the equations will over-estimate your caloric needs (because muscle burns more calories than fat to maintain itself)

A better equation takes into account your Body Fat Percentage. Estimating your Body Fat Percentage, is yet another task, though, for which there are several methods. One of the simplest is the "Height and Circumference method":

BFP = ((4.15 * waist in inches) - (0.082 * weight in pounds) - s) / weight

Where s is 76.76 for women, and 98.42 for men.

Once you know your BFP, you can calulate your RMR using the equation:

P = 370 + ( 21.6 * weight in kg * (1-BFP) )

I won't run through my personal numbers here (for the sake of saving space). My RMR came out to 1,828 kcal using a BFP of 25%. That tells me I need to eat 1,828 calories a day in order to maintain my current weight. Note, also, that my RMR obviously does not take into account my daily bike rides. My 75 minute ride with an average speed of 12-13 MPH burns about 960 calories (I looked it up). So, on a day when I bike, I need to consume 2,788 calories to maintain weight.

So my basic calorie requirements are 1,828 calories on non-work-out days, and 2,788 calories on work-out-days. To lose weight, through, I need to introduce the calorie deficit, for which I have two options:

1. Consume fewer calories
2. Increase my physical activity to burn more calories

Of course, I am doing both. It seems to be common sense among exercise forums and other sources on the internet that maintaining a defecit of 500 calories a day is safe, effective, and will cause you to lose 1 pound per week (there are 3500 calories in a pound of fat. So after a week of 500 calorie daily deficit, you've burned 3500 stored calories, and lost 1 pound). Unfortunately, I have NEVER eaten 2,788 calories a day (not in real food, anyway). So for me, even eating 2,288 calories a day (which represents a 500 calorie deficit) would be quite daunting.

I have introduced breakfast into my routine, and snack on fruits and veggies throughout the day, and follow it up with a healthy dinner (something along the lines of salad and grilled meet, chicken, or fish). Over the past week, I have only been taking in maybe 750 calories a day - which is clearly too low. I will try to increase that to somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 calories a day to promote higher metabolism.

Then, on days when I do not work out, I will have a minimum deficit of 328 calories, and on days when I do, a minimum deficit of 1,288 calories. In an average week then, say I bike 5 days, I would have a weekly deficit of 7,096 calories and have lost 2.02 pounds that week.

Final note -- you should concern yourself with two additional points:

1. WHERE exactly your body gets calories to make up for the deficit in your diet, and
2. Where the calories you do eat come from.

Your body will grab additional calories by burning fat and muscle tissue. So it's important to throw in some light-to-moderate weight training or callisthenics into your routine as well. This will help maintain and protect muscle mass, and force your body to get the necessary calories from fat tissue instead. Not to mention, it'll further increase the number of calories burned too, accelerating the whole process, and help tone and shape while you lose fat. Also, keep a watchful eye not only on the fat content of the food you eat, but on the "calories from fat." The USDA recommends that no more than 30% of your calories should come from fat, and I'd recommend less than that if you're trying to burn fat off.

So there you have it - my analytical mind pushing me to eat right and bike more through simple arithmetic and introductory thermodynamics. I knew that course would be good for something.

As of today, I am the proud new owner of a 2006 Trek 5200. Hopeully next week I'll start biking to work, and maybe next spring I'll be in shape enough to do some light touring... we'll see how that all works out. It's been about a decade since I've been on a bike, and even at that I wasn't riding a road bike -- the drop handle bars and an STI road shifter are going to take a lot of practice, and having locking cleats is a very strange feeling...

The purpose of this post though is to point out (and laugh at) the notice on the back of the printed manual that came with my bike

An English version of this manual is on the enclosed CD, and also on www.trekbikes.com. If you do not have access to a computer, and want a printed version of the manual, mail a request to the address listed above.

So basically, if I don't have a computer on which to view to electronic version of the printed manual I have in my hands, and want a printed manual instead, I can write, and they'll send me one. Can you say infinite recursion? The only saving grace is that there's actually a street address listed, and not an e-mail address.

Well now that I'm settled in at the new job (sort of), the fitness routine is starting :). Today Sammy took out on the 1.1 mi. loop at the office for my first run. It wasn't bad - got through it in about 11 minutes (and hey, you need to be able to make a 12 minute mile to pass high school gym. Suck on that Guccione).

A quick shower and 2 liters of water later, I'm sitting here at my desk beginning to feel like I might actually survive it! Sammy promises it only gets easier, and it gets easier fast -- let's hope.

So there you have it - I finally got off my ass and did something - and had fun doing it... who knew? We'll see how I survive next week :)

Well I decided today was as good a day as any to try that run; I was off a little on my 1 mile estimate before wanting to die; I only made it about 3/5ths of a mile. A couple years of sitting down will do that to you I guess. It wasn't fatigue that got me though, it was breathing - I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not though. Hopefully a little light training will help me through it. Any advice from less novice runners?