Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Aaaand - it's 2006!

Feels about the same as 2005, except it's a little easier now to look ahead to the REAL biking season and to Death Valley in October. My brain's halfway there already. The other half of my brain has been playing Half-Life for the last few days, leaving diddly-squat to devote to work.

First on the docket for the year is ridding myself of the annual Autumnal and Holiday Bloat, so I'll come clean with the relevant number: 243 pounds this morning. In Asheville, I was roughly 230, despite 2500 miles of riding. Annoyingly, in the fall of 2004, I was as low as 225.

My intention is to basically keep sugar and bread out of my diet as much as possible, while keeping track of calories in vs. calories out. FitDay makes that pretty easy. For cycling, I prefer the calorie calculator at Kreuzotter. It allows a lot more inputs; the FitDay cycling calorie calculator depends only on the time you ride, which ain't nearly accurate enough. For a 2 hour, 34 mile ride, FitDay gives 2053 calories burned, while Kreuzotter, which takes into account bike type, riding position, and other variables, gives 1368.

did