It's been 10 days since my last blog

There has been a lot going on since my last blog. Pizza, beer, birthday cakes, trips out of state, and yes.... still weight loss.

I have been worried about not having pizza. I love pizza, who doesn't. Anyways for a temporary fix until I get my homemade dough reciepe figured out, I have been buying a premade pizza whole wheat crust. It works really good. I use that, a low calorie pizza sauce (adding basil, and italian seasoning), low fat skim milk cheese, and then a ton of veggie toppings. Green peppers, bannana peppers, mushrooms, onions, and sometimes some italian spicy turkey sausage. It's great. I think the crust we buy is like a 12 or 14 inch pizza, and I slice it into 6ths. Carisa has half and I have half too (3 pieces each) and if there is no sausage - it is typically under 500 calories for all 3 pieces. Good deal.

I have been hooked on eating salads. Those are crazy low calories... 3 ounces of lettuce is somewhere around 10 calories.... so if you double that and add a low fat dressing - you can get quite the food filler for less than 50 calories.

Birthday's are tough. I love cake. I love Schulers cake... but man is there calories in there. On a Kroger 1/4 sheet cake - the serving size is 1/20th. That is a piece approximately 2 inches by 2 inches... which is a SMALL piece. Normally cut pieces are closer to 3x3 in my experience. OK, for the correct serving size, the average frosted cake has 350 calories per piece (for about it if you ended up with a flower on your piece or it is larger than 2x2). I still have eaten it, loved it, wanted more... but an hour or so after I get the eaters remorse. Cake is not that good. I can tell you I like the feeling of loosing weight more than the cake (looking back I can say that). It is tough at the time because the smell of the icing on the cake... the sweetness is so gratifing. But stay strong. It is not worth it, atleast limit yourself to one small piece.

I had a bike team trip to West Virginia this last Thursday and Friday. We go down to Jeff's Bike shop in Huntington, WV and he puts on a great Thursday night TNP Ride. That stands for Take No Prisinors ride. The 26 mile route is announced and then when it starts - game on! There is no waiting around for people falling of the back of the group. This ride is for all the marbles. You need to get to the finish line FIRST. There were 31 riders this year. We had 9 members from Champion City Cycling (my team) that showed up. I made it farther than last year in the main group. I was riding along and I heard this horrible screeching, grinding along the road and a bunch of people scrambleing for road space. As I slow to look to see what happened I no longer see 3 team mates. Turns out one of them and different rider were riding closely when the edge of the road dissappeared into a huge pot hole and tried to eat one rider. The scramble to stay up broke the pack up and luckily no one went down. Lots of shoes sliding, tires locked up, and people yelling look out. No one went down. Very fortunate with the speed of the pack (over 25 mph if I remember correctly at that time), everyone was lucky to not be beaten up. As I rounded up the missing riders, we got together and started to try to work back up to the main pack. We worked really well together and just never could close the gap to the main field. They stayed a good 100 feet in front of us. 13 miles, we hit the turn around. As we are rolling up there I notice all the riders after they have turned around are absolutely hammering to blow the pack up. Our group still needs to get to the turn around, slow down enough to turn around in the road (watching traffic) and get going again... needless to say this is where we got dropped. So we now decided to keep going and pick off the people getting spit out of the pack. We did that well. One rider was a pain to pass. He ended up forcing into the middle of our pack. Then couldn't handle the pace we road at, essentially splitting us up. Thanks dude. Anyways we get to the finish to hear that Champion City Cycling got 1st and 3rd over all. Sweet - Way to represent!!

Food on the trip was interesting. After the big ride, everyone goes out to dinner. So we have 30 riders show up at UNO Chicago Grill. The place is not busy at 8PM on a Thursday night during Spring break in a college town. We get seated all together (the place was defintely set up for big groups). So we get one waiter... not going to be quick. Anyways I had some veggie stuffed chicken with pasta, and water. I did get a whole wheat quesadilla with buffalo grilled chicken in it to split with everyone at the table. So over all with the riding and food for the day I was still in good shape.

Friday we headed out for another ride. We ended up going to Gallapolis, OH. 76 miles and over 2,000 feet of climbing. I felt really good. Could have kept going. We had a total of 19 riders for this ride. It wasn't a race, but we kept up a good pace (typical 20mph avg).

With 6 weeks to go until my main race for this year, Mount Mitchell. I feel like I am in better shape than last year. I am riding stronger than I did all last year, I have 30 pounds lighter, and more focused than ever on getting to the top of that mountain. I am going to put it out there right now. Last year I completed the 103 mile race, and over 11,000 feet of climbing in over 11 hours total time (I think it was around 11:20). That includes all the rest stops where you refill your water bottles, get food, and use the bathroom (all the time standing in lines with other riders). I'm just saying, this year it is on. I want to complete the entire thing in under 8 hours. That will be a challenge for me. I have put it out there to hold me accountable now.

Now for the weight loss info... I have been doing this for 74 days. Today marks the 30lb mark. I have 4 more pounds until I hit my 2nd goal of 190lbs. If I can get that done before May, I will re-adjust it down to 185. So we shall see.

Thank you to everyone who reads this. I have gotten many compliments, messages, and people telling me I have inspired them on their journey. I do appologize, I always hated English class in school, writing was never my thing. So if I ramble, that is why. I hope to entertain you, show you everybody deals with the difficultly of weight loss, and if you stick with it, through the ups and downs, just know that there will be more downs than ups. Thanks for all the support!