Survival Guide to Oktoberfest

Dread, fear and loathing . . . or in other words, my wife dragged me to Oktoberfest in Munich today, Saturday, and I didn't get a ride in. Worse, what do you do when you are surrounded by huge flagons of beer, bratwurst, smokers, candy and in general you're in the midst of over 500,000 people engaging in the sorts of behaviors YOU have tried so hard to get rid of? Well, you suck it up and take one moment at a time. The smoking was easy although it's a pain to be around smokers, we didn't have any trouble with the beer. You have to get inside a beer tent first but they all seemed to be full but we found a biergarten (an outside patio like place) where after a not too arousing pat down we found a place and got some beer. Strong Paulaner ale like the Germans drink since they're five years old and leave their mothers breasts. Of course most mothers can drink a lot too so even breastmilk is probably 40 proof most of the year!

Anyway, we did pretty good, just the one beer then a baked potato on the concourse and some almonds to cap the meal off. OK, Graeme Street would slap me . . . they were roasted sweet coated almonds, but only had a few! When we finally managed to extract and work our way against the crowd - imagine a sea of women in drindl dresses and men in lederhosen along with a whole lot of fashionable Italian boys (seems this weekend is when the Italians swarm up over the alps) coming at you and you have the picutre - we got to the train, then to the car and fortuantely stopped on the autobahn where I scored a cappuchino, banana and apple! Ah!

So now we're at home and looking at a quiet night. I plan on doing some planning and reading tonight to keep preparing for the change. But I survivied Oktoberfest and didn't put on weight!

Another weekend

Well, I purged out a lot of old cycling team uniforms. I don't know why I kept them, nostalgia or thinking I could get back to that but it's not true, I need to go forward and all that old stuff is just baggage and clutter. Oh I kept my college team jersey and a few from important events I will use for training inside or out but anything team related I didn't earn is gone.

Got the Jamis built up with Campy triple so now all my bikes are Campy and I don't need to think about how I'm shifting and having different hand positions.

So . . . where am I, where am I going and more importantly how am I going to get there? One and two are in progress but three is pretty easy. I'm going to basically throw out all the old training stuff and advice, plans etc. and go with simple. I'm going to use Cyclo-core for workouts and stretching plus riding, just riding for now. I can do intervals and other more structured training when my base fitness and weight get where I want. Nutrition with Cyclo-Fuel and I'll start with the fat burning metabolism jump start next week.

That's about it for now. More later!

It's sooooo late . . . zzzzz

OK, not the healthiest day but I wasn't able to sleep last night so I put the time to good use and really cleaned out some stuff that needed purging. I got rid of all my old team uniforms from Hammer Racing in Colorado (geez its a lot and I know it was expensive too!) and just old crap. Except the closet in the bedroom which I wasn't able to get to 'cuz the wife and our 5 year old are sleeping. So, I made some progress. Found some music and books that got misplaced in the move and even found a great book by Mike Magnuson called Heft on Wheels which is about a really fat guy like me who got his butt in gear and in shape. Worth reading again; it has been in storage in Colorado for three years and got here with the last shipment of our stuff.

I'm fighting to stay awake now but at 3:30am it's very hard and I may doze for an hour or so. Most of my energy is spent but as part of the next assault on the barriers holding me back from my life, I needed to purge the old. There's a lot more to go but it's a big start and a good psychological push since I've been mentally holding on to the time I was at Hammer but I know with the back injury and weight I won't get back to that point, so out with the old and move on!

I want my life back! Now where did I put it?

Hi, welcome to my weblog. This is about a guy who was healthy, strong and fairly slim who got lost along the way and sidetracked by life, injury and other stuff. Willpower creates the conditions for change so RIGHT NOW I'm doing the equivalent of a D-day invasion and making a massive surge to make another change to my environment to enable me to get back to where I was so that I can go forward.

I weigh 298 pounds and want to get to 225 by May 2009. That's about 10 pounds a month.

Thanks and we'll see how it goes!