Reforming Habits

It's been a little while since I posted an entry, but I've noticed that seems to happen to me during the winter season.  I have less going on as the weather closes in and less to write about. But there have been some things happening, so I'll try to fill in the blanks.

Trying to ride the new fat bike around town in 10" of snow.

I took a week of vacation at Christmas so that I could spend some time with Kenny while he was off school.  There were all sorts of plans being considered, but I got hit with a nasty cold the very first day of vacation, and spent the next ten days being sick.  I recovered just in time for my birthday on December 28, but picked up the flu two days later.  This flu hung on for waaay too long, bringing a bout of walking pneumonia with it.  So I managed to use up my whole year of sick days on the first week of the new year.  It was at least two weeks before I was feeling like myself again.

Of course I had to go to the doctor a couple of times during this period.  And that brought bad news to the forefront when I was weighed during my appointment.  I'm not a tall guy, and I got over an inch shorter a couple of years ago when I crashed my bike and landed on my head, fracturing my skull.  And I do tend towards fat, so I have to keep an eye on my calorie intake and exercise level.  But it was a disappointing surprise to find out that I weighed more than I have since I was a teen.  Of course part of it was the intake of holiday calories, though I thought I'd been fairly judicious about snacking on my wife's amazing Christmas cookies.  And another factor was the marked decrease in outdoors exercise due to the weather and being sick.  But the real story is depressingly familiar - too many bad habits, and not enough good ones.

So I decided that I was going to try to change my diet and fitness during 2015.  I'm not a big fan of the spur-of-the-moment New Years resolution, since it seems like jumping into a big difficult project without a plan isn't that good of an idea.  Instead I started thinking about what I thought I could change, where my weakest points were, and what I want my goal to be.  And then I started to try to bring my bad habits under control.

My plan for the year is two-fold:  better diet and more consistent exercise.  As far as diet, I'm not as bad off as I could be, but there is definitely room for improvement.  My typical day had me start with a small breakfast, a reasonable lunch, and then a good, home cooked supper.  Where it fell apart was the evening snacking, when I was winding down before bed.  Harnessing that urge to snack in the evening is not easy for me, and it's taken me a month of self-discipline to get it back in control.  There are other diet changes as well - mainly my efforts to cut my processed sugar intake by 90%.  That means no soda (which I don't usually drink anyway) but it also means no candy or pastries.  I am definitely making progress towards this 90% reduction.

The second part of the plan is to increase my exercise levels.  Usually that would mean riding the bike more, but that doesn't work when we've had 70 days straight of snow cover.  After thinking it over I decided that going back to weight lifting would be a good idea.  In my younger days I used to have a weight program that I followed for years.  I wasn't interested in big, body builder type muscles - just in being strong enough to let me do the fun stuff that I like.  And with my 14 year old son Ken now measuring in at 6 feet tall (that's 7 inches taller than me) it seemed like a good time to get him involved as well.

Kenny

We're not going to use the Weider gym that my mom gave us when we moved, but are going back to the good old days of free weights.   It's been over a month since we started a three day a week program that takes us about an hour to complete.  I know that I'm already noticing a difference and I think Ken is starting to firm up a bit as well.  And I know that this extra boost in strength will only help my mountain biking this summer, so I'm determined to keep up with it.

But I know from past experience how easy it is to procrastinate, make exceptions to the rule, and take days off from exercise or dieting.  After thinking about it for a while I decided that I would grade my will power every day.  I start out with 100% every day and then deduct 10% for each lapse in will power - i.e. evening snacking, eating sugar packed foods, missing workouts, etc etc.  For me keeping a concrete record where I make myself declare my failures at the end of each day seems to help keep my goals at the forefront of my consciousness, so that I'm less likely to have a spontaneous weakness and break my 'rules'.  So far this has worked very well for me, as my diet and exercise have been remarkable consistent since I started.

I don't like to make the whole goal of the process to be just 'weight loss'.  There's a lot more to it than that - the establishment of more good habits and the discarding of bad ones.  I don't even like to use the scale we have at the house (those damned electronic scales are so inaccurate). But at the end of the year I'd really like to see a weight loss of at least 25 pounds.  Yeah, that's not that much right?  Right now I'm at about 195# - an amount that makes me feel fat and clumsy.  If I were to be able to get down to 170# it would make a huge difference.  If I was able to get down to my best weight that I had in my 20's it would take another 25# loss after that...

I'll keep tabs on my progress through the year as I post here, and we'll see how this turns out.  So far it seems to be working, but we'll see how it plays out as the year unwinds.

Snowscape along the farm roads north of Warren.

As far as bicycling goes it's been pretty sparse so far this year.  Even though I am now a proud fat bike owner, the snow cover has been consistent since the beginning of the year, and mountain biking has been pretty much out of the question.  I've made a couple of very difficult rail trail rides, over packed snow and ice, but not many.  There have been several rides on the empty back roads of northern Trumbull county, but with the cold, wind and ice they haven't been as long as I'd like.  Every little bit counts though, so I'll keep on getting out when I can and wait for the snow to finish melting off so that my riding horizons can open up again.

Started out as a road ride, but ended up with a nice long hike a bike through 16" of snow.

One nice thing on the horizon is that Ken and I are planning a week long bicycle tour on the Greenbrier Trail in West Virginia's Monongahela National Forest.  Diana can't take a big vacation this year since she started the new job in November and won't have vacation time accumulated till this November.  So Kenny and I plan to head out on our own and spend a week riding the rail trails and mtb trails in West Virginia.  That's meant spending some extra cash outfitting the bikes, but we already had a bunch of gear so the process is moving along pretty well.

Riding on the ice in northern Trumbull county.

Our spring thaw started about ten days ago, so much of the snow cover is gone.  I'm hoping that the ice will be off the Western Reserve Greenway Trail by this weekend, and I can get back in the habit of pushing out some paved miles within a week or so.  One thing - with better weather coming it seems unlikely that I'll go another three months without a blog post!

The Grind

It's been a while since I posted anything here - since November in fact. I believe that's the longest gap since I started the blog. But in my defense, there just hasn't been a lot of fun stuff to write about lately.

The holidays are through, and that's a good thing. I'm not a big holiday type person, and I'm glad when the blatant commercialism and worship of well-packaged crap is over for another year. We had a typical Christmas, even though it's harder to make it happen as Kenny gets older and leaves childhood behind. Still, he was more or less happy with what he got and I guess that's enough.

The main thing on my mind lately has been winter. This won't be news to anyone who lives nearby, but this winter has been unusually tough. We've had wintry weather since the end of November, with a colder than normal December and January. The mid-winter thaw that has been such a wonderful reset the last several years just didn't happen this year. We've had just about constant snow cover, and way more than normal days with temperatures below zero. Usually I pride myself in being able to deal with winter and still do the things that I enjoy, but when the thermometer gets down to single digits or below I really have very little desire to be outside.

Between the snow and the frost heave (also known as 'needle ice') on the trails there hasn't been very much mountain biking this winter. I've managed a couple of trips out to West Branch, but the trail conditions each time were less than ideal. With winter riding you expect it to be way harder, so it was still worth the trip - but its not something that I want to do that often. I've also headed over to the nearby North Road Nature Preserve to ride a couple of times in the last two months. These are the mountain bike trails in town that I've been working on building for the last three years. We're a small group of volunteers, so it's taken us that long to build three miles of trails. They're basically beginner type trails, with no real hills, and very few rocks or roots. But they're only a couple of miles from the house, and by riding a complete circuit in either direction I can get an hour of riding in the woods - and that is a good thing.



Beside Mosquito Creek on the North Road Nature Preserve trails.

I've tried to take advantage of the rail trails this winter too.  I've done a few rides on the Western Reserve Greenway - until I overestimated my skills and underestimated the ice cover, which resulted in the hardest crash I've had in a couple of years.  It's been over a month and the road rash is still healing.  I also got in a couple of rides on the Little Beaver Creek Greenway, which has to be one of the best around.  So far this winter I caught it with just a little snow, with a lot of snow, and in the middle of a blizzard.  But the trail is great, with curves and mild hills, where many of our NE Ohio rail trails are flat and straight.  And the scenery along the Middle Fork of Little Beaver Creek is hard to beat.

The Teegarden Bridge alongside Little Beaver Creek Greenway.

And just to show how far this winter weather has pushed me - I've been out riding on the roads several times.  Usually I don't like to do road rides - as a million mile plus driver I've seen way too many idiots at the wheel to place my trust in a random motorists talents.  But with singletrack unrideable, and the rail trails covered with snow packed down by illegal snowmobilers (and boy does that make me mad), the only choice remaining has been on the roads.  I do realize that I'm lucky to live in an area that has easy access to sparsely travelled back roads - seeing a car every ten minutes is about the average up there.  But I now ride with a rearview mirror and almost always stop when I see a car approaching from behind to make sure I'm not about to become another statistic  (go to crazyguyonabike.com and check out the "Sweet Rolls" tour journal for a sad story about this - and take a minute to leave some words of encouragement in their guest book too).  But it can be a lot of fun on the back roads in Amish country.

Gravel road riding between snows in southern Ashtabula County.

Riding through the old farm country can be very pleasant.  The terrain is mostly flat, and since I ride my mountain bike the road surfaces are always good enough.  As I spend more time on these back roads I'm picking out the best spots for to string together to get a nice road loop that I can access from the rail trail once the snow melts.

Old fashioned quality building.

The trick is finding the balance between traffic and snow cover.  Too little traffic and the snow doesn't get worn down, too much traffic and it's not safe.  So sometimes I choose the lesser of two evils, and ride on roads that are maybe a bit more snowy than I'd like.

Snowy, but not quite TOO snowy.

So I endure, just like everyone else.  The days are getting longer at over 2-1/2 minutes of added daylight each day.  Spring approaches - eventually.  I wait for the weekends, when I have time to ride in the daytime, and hope that the weather will at least minimally cooperate.

In non-bicycling related news, there have been a couple of developments.  For one, the firm that I work for has gotten two big jobs in the last couple of months.  When the recession hit the competition in our field got pretty fierce for the few remaining jobs, and we've gone over five years between big commissions.  But we recently won the contract on the biggest building we've ever done, and another big job not long after that (and another one that looks very promising coming up).  So that means some of the pressure is off about paying the bills etc.  I'm very thankful to the partners in the firm that we managed to stick it out through the lean times, and keep on pushing ahead towards recovery.

Another interesting happening is that I was appointed to the Trumbull County Metroparks board.  One of the retiring board members, familiar with me through my work on the North Park trails, nominated me for the post, and in December I was sworn in.  I have no illusions about the job - things happen slowly, and progress has to be planned carefully.  But I think that we have an amazing county park system for the population we have, and am excited to be able to be a small part of continuing the improvements that we've seen in the last ten years.

With the calendar heading towards spring, and the inevitable return of warm weather, I'll probably be way more likely to get out and ride.  Which means that I won't be likely to go another two months between posts.

Under the light of the silvery moon

My blog posting as of late has been a once-a-month thing, with a recap of the previous month sometime in the first week or so. Unfortunately I didn't manage to get things together early in November, and neglected to post. So, under the 'better late than never' heading here is an update.

September was a pretty good month for riding, as I tried to meet a mileage challenge of 200 miles (which I managed to beat by 10 miles or so). But in trying to get more miles I rode less singletrack and more road/rail trail. Any type of riding is good, but I do consider myself to be more of a mountain biker, so sacrificing time on the dirt to rack up numbers didn't seem like a very good idea to me. So in October I tried to get my bike time on dirt if possible, rather than more miles on the rail trail. The monthly mileage total was only 150 miles in 16 rides, but 8 of those rides were on the dirt. For me that's not too bad, especially considering that my bike was out of service for several days in the middle of the month. I also spent a bit more time on trail work, with two group days and two solo days. Fall is a great time to work on the trails up here - the mosquitoes are finally gone, and the poison ivy loses dies back a bit. My long term trail project at the county park is starting to get to a point where it provides a nice, close to home riding alternative.

One thing about riding this year has bothered me - it seems like I never have enough time to just ride until I'm tired enough that I want to stop. It's relatively easy for me to carve out regular chunks of time in the 2 hour range (my wife is very understanding of my need to get out). But it seems like my ride is always defined by the time available and not the energy I'm willing to use. Here's hoping that this situation will find some resolution in the upcoming year. One thing I could do to get in more long rides is to focus on the nearby trails, so there is less driving time and more riding time. Even though I love to get out on a variety of trails, that is something that I'm going to have to keep in mind.

The weather was pretty good during October, and I did finally buckle down and get the majority of the leaves raked in our yard. If we get one more fairly dry day above freezing I should be able to finish up - I raked 42 bags so far, so I'm guessing that there are about a dozen more to go. But today the weather is making a point of not cooperating - the forecast is for up to a foot of snow in the next day or so. As I look out my window a steady snowfall is coating the Youngstown buildings. So I'm guessing that there won't be much riding for at least a little while, since 4" is about how much I can ride through without having a major coronary.

All this riding, trail work etc could lead a person to think that I'm fantastically fit, but that is really not the case. I'm probably in as good condition as I ever have been, but the fact remains that I'm a short, slightly overweight 50 year old with a respiratory problem. So my rides aren't that impressive - either in length or in speed, and my stamina is not that great. I know that I have to keep active to stay fit, and it's become part of my lifestyle to try and get out every other day or so and get some exercise. Taking all that into consideration, I had a banner day earlier a week or so ago.

Saturday started out brisk - perfect weather for working on trails. I met with a couple of other volunteers and we spent a couple of hours cutting a new trail corridor, and bringing the tread on another section up to finish quality. Our volunteer group isn't exactly a flock of spring chickens, so we're satisfied with a relatively short trail work day. After we finished up I headed home, but rather than plopping down on the couch to recover I decided to take advantage of the clear day to rake up some more leaves. Two and a half hours later I had over 20 bags filled, and the job was past the halfway point. I was pretty tired out, and figured that I'd be pretty much exhausted for the rest of the day.

We headed out to my sisters for supper, and spent some time watching some of my Dad's slides from 50 years ago. It was just what I needed - good food and a chance to relax. Afterwards, as we drove home I couldn't help but notice how bright the full moon was, with the sky being mostly clear of clouds. Just seeing that spotlight of a moon gave me a burst of energy.

As I was driving I said to my wife, "Do you have any problem with my trying to get in a night ride at West Branch tonight?" She knows that I love night riding, and I'd told her earlier in the month that I was hoping for a good full moon ride this fall, so she gave me her blessing. As soon as we got home I packed my gear and bike into the station wagon and headed out.

The mountain bike parking lot at West Branch State Park was empty when I got there at 9:00 - no big surprise there. The sky had started to cloud up slightly as I drove out, and now there was a thin layer of clouds across the sky. But the moon was so bright that it lit up that whole area of clouds, and I could see around me almost as if it was daylight. I geared up, put the lights on the bars, and headed out without turning them on.

The pale light through the clouds was bright enough to read the trail by, thanks to the recent storm taking most of the remaining leaves off of the trees. Some places the leaves on the trail blended in with the roots and dirt, but by keeping a slow speed I could feel my way over everything. Occasionally the clouds would move so that the moon was shining through a clear spot, and then the forest would light up even more - enough that I could see my shadow on the trail ahead of me. I rode for over an hour, covering more than 6 miles of rooty singletrack, and never even turned on my lights. While I was loading the bike up I realized that I hadn't even thought about being tired during the whole ride. The magic of the surroundings had provided the stimulus, and my basic fitness had provide the ability to experience something special. Later at home, relaxing with a cold beer, I entered the day's activities on my Mapmyride account, and was surprised to see that it totaled well over 2000 calories of exercise.

As far as non-bicycling news goes, the biggest (and best) news is that it looks like business is finally picking up at work. We've had a long (loooong) dry spell between big jobs, which looks like it is going to end very soon. Too early to say definitively, but it sure looks promising. Another small tidbit of personal news - as part of the Mosquito Lake Greenway Committee, it was obvious that our area needs some sort of meeting place for bicyclists. A club would be the best thing, but I'll be double damned if I ever go through torture again. Instead, I started a Facebook page called 'Warren Bicyclists' to post local and regional bike news, and provide local riders with a place to meet each other. Obviously it could have been better timed - starting up just as the Ohio riding season is coming to an end isn't helping. But slowly it's drawing members, so that hopefully it will be useful in the spring when everyone is ready to ride again.

Of course I'm ready to ride NOW. Not looking likely, but I'm ready to go!

NOTE: Blogspot is giving me an EXTREMELY hard time putting this post together. Hopefully I will be able to edit it and add some photos soon. And thanks TJ for a nudge to get this post done.

Fifty

Fifty.

The big five-oh.  Half a century.  Five decades.  Way too many months, weeks, days etc. to bother to enumerate.

The beginning of every decade of your existence is supposed to be some sort of milestone.  When you turn thirty it's supposed to be a big deal.  And when you turn forty everyone acts like it means something profound.  Again at fifty - ooooh, look at you being sooo old.

Bah. I'm basically not buying it.  I know people that are the same immature idiots at 55 that they were at 25.  In other words, growing older doesn't always equate with growing up.  We all know people that hit their maturity early as well.  Folks who show a wisdom and poise beyond their years.  So it's not quite as linear as all that.

But I am in a pretty sour mood.  I have 11 days off work, using the Christmas holiday, New Years holiday and my left over vacation time.  So I get to spend some time with my son while he's off school, which is nice.  But damned if the weather didn't get all wintry on me, so instead of my dream vacation featuring days of riding singletrack I'm moping around the house.  Too much snow to do trail work too, but I did get out for a couple of hikes.  Spending some time on the bike would have really helped take the sting out of this day, but you get what you get.

And really, I tried - I loaded up the bike and headed out to the trails to give it a shot.  The snow is right at the depth where it starts to make riding impossible, but I could make some headway.  It was great - unbroken snow on the trail in front of me, almost perfect silence in the sun - but I had to turn back.  This happens early in the year - snow lying on unfrozen ground.  And that ground was wet in spots, so that I'd be doing damage to the trail if I went on.  So it was a short ride, but I stretched it out by adding some snow covered road riding - lots of fun.

But  back to fifty.  I can reassure myself that I'm more fit at fifty than I was at forty, and that is a certainty.  My strength is better, my weight is a little less, and my stamina has improved.  But I definitely feel that I have a lot of room for improvement, so I hope to make some changes this year. 

I did pretty well early in the year with my nutrition, but kind of lost focus during the summer.  I was riding five days a week and with that exercise level I didn't have to worry about my calorie input.  But after getting sick in September and then getting really busy my riding schedule suffered, and the shorter days of fall made it even worse.  So I need to get back on track with my calories and with my exercise as well.  Just because it's snowy out I shouldn't just forget about exercise.  So I have to face the ugly reality and get back to riding the stationary bike in the basement (groan).  What I plan on doing is getting back into the habit of using MapMyRide as my nutrition and workout tracker.  It's a great site, especially since it's free, and I know from experience that it can help.   So starting with the beginning of January I plan on logging in and keeping my stats every day.

Hopefully that will result in losing some weight and improving my fitness a bit more this year.  I have a lot of things that I plan to do this year, from riding and trail building projects, to work on the house and time with my family.  Being healthier will make all of those things easier and more fun.  Wish me luck.

My next post will be more 'literary' in nature - I just needed to get this stupid 'fifty' thing out of my craw so that I can realize that today is just a day, and tomorrow will be yet another day.  Might get some more snow tomorrow - maybe I'll go sled riding...

The Greenway was White

I got up nice and early this morning to see if I could get out and do something while Diana was at work and Kenny was at his friends house.  It was just a little below freezing, with an inch of snow on the ground and more coming down.  Knowing that the ground at Moraine was completely soaked, and that the drive over there would take even more than the normal hour each way, I decided to try and stay close to home.  So I packed my gear and headed out for an early morning snow ride on the Western Reserve Greenway.

Instead of starting from the nearby Sunside trailhead I headed north a bit to the Oakfield trailhead.  When I got there the parking area was empty, but there were two bike tracks on the snow already.  Somebody sure made an early ride on the snow today.  I headed north and rode up past the Ashtabula County line before turning around and heading back.



The snow was coming down pretty good, and starting to stick a little bit more.  When I came up to the Dunkerton Road crossing, there were no car tracks on the road - just the bike tracks crossing on the trail.

The ditches along the trail were full of water from the recent rains.  At one spot there was a little dam where someone, probably a muskrat, had tried to make a pool.

It was a nice ride.  My feet were about frozen when I got back to the car, and my bike was crusted over with snow and ice.

I'm glad that I managed to at least get out, and I guess I did enjoy pushing on through the snow and wind.  You can't even tell there was a snow storm this morning by now.  Temperatures came up to near 40, and all the snow melted.  Lets see what happens tomorrow.