It's really not her fault!

Hello, hello, is this thing on?  Um...Hello World.  Yeah, that phrase is a bit tired, and maybe even tainted by the guy who first made it famous in Sept. 1996.  Yeah I'm talking about Eldrick "Tiger" Woods, but still, as a first post documenting me, my weight loss, and my on again/off again love affair with cycling, I felt it appropriate to use - just don't associate me with the guy that got beat up by his golf-club swinging wife.  So, again I say, Hello World...!

So who am I?  I'm a father to some very active young boys and a husband to a very supportive wife.  Of course, the supportive wife is also partly the reason why I'm a clydesdale.  I say partly because I am really the only one to blame, especially since last night I was sitting on my tush watching a snoozer of a BCS championship game and had just eaten a BIG bowl of homemade clam chowder (the best I've ever had, hands down).  So, in no way am I blaming her (that's my marital protection disclaimer).  I love you, B, and your cooking too...

I'm also a busy professional in the technology industry with a job that often requires me to work long hours, holidays, and, in general, leaves me tired at the end of the day.  I love my job and the company I work for, however, it doesn't leave much time for cycling.  Nor does the family life.  Nor do my other extra-curricular activities.  At least up to this point they haven't!

So that's all going to change.  I sat down with myself over the past few months and had a long conversation with myself.  Of course I had to keep getting up to go work, or go to bed, or to eat, drink, and be merry, but what I determined from this long and often interrupted conversation with myself was the following:

1. I like to eat

2. I like to road bike

3. I like to be with my family

4. I like to mt. bike

5. I like read

6. I like bike

I know - many of us like the same things.  My problem, however, is that the actual order of the list looks more like this:

1. I like to spend time with my family

2. I like to eat

3. I like to read

4. I like to bike - Road or Mountain

Oh, and I can't forget sleeping.  My wife likes to joke that I can't stay awake past 9pm.  Of course, that's not entirely true b/c we watch a lot of movies that go way past 9pm, I just don't remember parts of the middle of those movies.

But staying up late and having to get up early don't really work for me all the time, despite that fact that for 6 years (from age 10 to age 16) I had an early morning paper route that required me to get up at 4:30am every day, regardless of rain, snow, or lack of sunshine...it used to work really well for me, back in college, but now, not so much.

So, back to the things I determined about myself - liking to spend time with my family and reading take up a lot of my cycling time.  Eating, combined with a lack of exercise, leads to an increase in the poundage hanging on my previously svelte frame.  Now, don't get me wrong - I still find time to cycle.  I just don't do it consistently which in reality doesn't do me much good, just like a dieter who diets twice a week won't really lose the fat they're trying to dump.

But, it just hit me - you, my few interested readers, may not know what a clydesdale is.  By now you may have read my blog theme and gained a bit of an understanding of what a clydesdale is.  This is a clydesdale

Yep, that's an actual clydesdale.  But the definition of a clydesdale in cycling is a bit different, but not to far off from that horse up above.  A cyldesdale in cycling is defined by his weight - over 200 lbs and stuffed into spandex, like this guy (note the belly poking thru in between his bibs and shirt, ewww...)

but definitely not this guy (Tour de France racer Michael Rasmussen - I find it scary that he appears to be in a hospital room)

But I digress.  Now that you know what a clydesdale is, you need to know that I am determined to not be a clydesdale anymore.  I used to be consistently 170lbs - for my 6'1 that was pretty skinny (photos to come later in my next post) - and I want to be there again, maybe not 170 but at least weigh less than 200.  I want to use this blog to document my determined movement away from clydesdale status as well as my re-dedication to cycling and my new experiences with racing.  As I get more and more familiar with blogging I'll be in putting a tracker on the side that tracks my weight loss.  For now, however, I will just state that I'm 228 and up 3 lbs from the beginning of the year...wrong way, Dave, wrong way...and I can't blame my wife, so it must be genetics!