The Diet

I did the week of 21 miles per day as expected. I took a four day break after that, and also took a diet break. I got stressed about having said I’d do 21 miles a day for a week, and then remembered that the planned break didn’t start until after the week was over. It’s nice that some worries are dispensed with so quickly. The low calories and the strict everyday rides were adding up. I was ready for it.

In this case, a diet break, means that I ate more vegetables and didn’t actually write down my intake. That put me higher on carbs than the keto recommendations I’ve been following (the ones I was having a very hard time meeting in the first place). I still did the 8/16 IF (or something close to that) and believe that I had 1500 or fewer calories on those days. So, a break, but still restricted calories and I walked every day (to keep from experiencing an endorphin sink and enjoy nature).

The weight loss didn’t suffer as I was afraid it might, and I took one more day of break (food, not riding) to have a slice of pizza with a gift card I was given. I’m a little shocked. I was afraid that the weight loss was only happening when eating 1100 or fewer calories and that even then, it was waning. If that was the case, I didn’t really see how I could keep it up, and I think the weight loss is important to the project right now. In truth, I might not have averaged much more than 1100 calories per day while on break, but weight loss has been tough for me lately and paranoia is strong with this one. And the other thing is that once you take a break, you want to take 5 more of them.

The Heat

Heat tolerance is a big reason I’m working on weight loss right now. I see people my age and older in the biking groups that ride in much hotter conditions. Part of that is that they are riding in places where you don’t really need to take a wet bulb temperature to keep your athletes alive. Another part is that many of them were athletic since their 20s. I never expect to match the performance of many of them. I have Raynaud’s Syndrome and I suspect that poor response in microcirculation is part of why I am less tolerant.

My tolerance has slowly increased with time in the saddle though. Three years ago when my rides were short enough, I coped with summer heat by starting near dawn and finishing before temps got out of the 70s, and didn’t ride if I couldn’t keep most of my ride under 80 degrees. Then I shifted to being able to tollerate the 80s. Now I will ride in the low 90s, but I prefer not to. At that temp my face turns bright red and strangers will ask me if I’m alright. I have an absolute stop signal though. If I ever reach the point where my face feels like it is on fire, I’m at risk of a migraine or worse. Sometimes I don’t notice that I’m that hot until I stop riding and feel the absence of air flow.

Because I can control eating, but not the Raynaud’s, that’s where my next level focus is, and I’m comforted by the fact that I won’t have to do 100 mile rides in July until I’ve been doing them for 9 months. July is also one of the months when we have a break scheduled, so between weight loss, more time riding and having a break planned, I should be able to make it through next July, and fill in any gap with rides I take the following year while winding down gradually.

The Rides

Yesterday I rode in the rain and skipped the slippery boardwalks. There was still a lot of wetness, but I was careful and remembered every time I hit my brakes that my project bike will have disc brakes. I rode past a dozen deer, but once I got the camera out most were hiding in the twilight shadows and I didn’t even take the shot.

I prefer wet to hot, no surprise. My shoes filled with water the way a wet suit insulates you with a layer of water, except that this was a lot more water and my feet didn’t warm it up, Raynaud’s… I didn’t notice while riding, but the water balloons on my feet were unmissable when I started walking and my feet felt cold for most of the night,

Tonights’s ride was damp and cool too. There’s a man who swings a cane around in every direction. There may be a pattern to it. I haven’t noticed if there is. It has been a very long time since I’ve seen him, way pre-pandemic. My guess is that he’s protecting the full width of his lane, but once when I passed him, he swung toward me beyond the boundary of his lane. It has been so long since I’ve seen him, that I forgot about him. I’m sad and surprised that he’s still out there, or more correctly, that he’s still doing it. It seems like it’s risky enough that he would have had problems that got him in trouble between now and the last time I saw him.

Well, that’s it for the new, the old and the odd.

Happy trails!