happy action fun times

Something I am pretty psyched about: Mountain biking... not that i havent always been psyched about it, but in the last couple of years I had lost some fitness and gained some weight, which made biking all the more difficult...especially having to carry extra weight up all the hills around here.
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Well, last fall when I spent a week in my desk chair, staring outside watching the inevitable onset of winter, knowing that the mediocre fitness I had attained over summer would fade, I decided to join the gym so i wouldnt be so sedentary over winter. I also hoped for improving my fitness, so I could ride better this year... but at first my goal was to make sure I made a regular habit of getting some exercise at a time of year when I otherwise would get little. I succeeded in making it a habit, and then i set my sites on trying to lose some weight...

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I was talking to chritre about it and she wanted to lose some of her own, so we made a little game of it... attaining a certain amount by a certain date, and if one of us made it and the other didnt, then the loser (i mean the non-winner, or the person who didnt lose the weight) had to buy dinner when we got together. She won the first round (I think I made her dinner- linguine with white wine clamsauce??), ...sent me a photo of her digital scale... I made a paper version of the digital readout saying my goal weight du jour, 194, placed it between my toes and took a photo, as if i was on the scale... i still have the paper, its on my fridge.. i think my actual weight at the time was ~197,198... which was down from where I had hovered for the last couple of years ~205.
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Anywho, cheese was still a vital component of the diet at that point, and snacking on peanuts was certainly helping me keep the weight on... so i put tighter constraints on the consumption of those things and it helped accelerate weight loss. I was doing a good variety of weights in the gym and some spin classes, and as biking season grew nearer, I did more spin classes and less weights... the weight was melting off pretty rapidly but i was more or less plateaued in ~188 give or take... with the post spin/sweat session always showing the scale even lower. I was pretty psyched that I had shed some weight before biking season, cuz trying to lose weight while trying to ride hard is practically impossible...

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In the last month or two of my offseason conditioning, i did a spin class with an instructor that i hadnt been to before, Tammy... first song she played was the Cult, She Sells Sanctuary... needless to say, she shot right to the top of my favorite instructors list. There were other highlights on her setlist that day, enough to keep me coming back, but what made it even better was that she is an actual cyclist with actual knowledge of the types of drills that actually will make a person a better, faster cyclist... and she's a mtbiker, which is an important distinction that I have a hard time describing... roadie-centric trainers would probably be a lot less interesting. Anywho, with her coaching, I got even more excited about riding my mtbike... and now that I have been on it a bunch, my fitness took a huge leap since my body was more ready for the real deal.. and now my weight is between 180 and 185... just right.
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Now when I go to spin (still go to Tammy's class, even if the sun is out), even going full-on as hard as I can, it just doesnt come close to the difficulty of actual rides, or of the difficulty I perceived of the class a couple of months ago... validation! Finally, I also hoped to be able to keep up with my buddies when we go mtb'n... i wasnt able to the last few years... I hadnt had an opportunity to see if I had achieved that goal until yesterday, and I did... YAY!!