Month: November 2008

All Things Falling Apart

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

Well, it wasn’t bad enough that yesterday I had an accident and broke my handlebar stem and stem bolt but when we were at the pharmacy today I noticed the arm on my glasses were loose.  I thought I just needed to tighten the screw.  When we got home I screwed it but it was still loose.  It’s the type of arm that has a spring so you can push them outward and they go back to normal.  I guess it broke inside the arm.

I called the optometrist I got them from and they had to order a new pair and it’s gonna cost me $35.

Then I went out to my bike to see if I can bend that piece of the stem that was bent but it is way too bent for me to fix, the metal is too hard for me to bend it with a pair of pliers.  I went to pick up a screwdriver and my old .99¢ light fell off the chair and broke lol.

I went to go online and I had no internet connection lol.  Anything else?  Sheesh!

Spoke Magnet

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

When I came home from the E.R. today I noticed that the magnet on my front wheel spoke was gone (magnet for the cyclo-computer) and so I went to eBay to see if they had any and they had 1 for $2 plus $1.51 shipping.  Even though my bank account is running low, I have about $30 left, I took the liberty of making a $5 bid.  If I can avoid having to buy a whole new computer just for a magnet then I will.

There were other magnets on eBay for $7 – $9 but with shipping costs that would make them come out to be about $12 or $13.  The computer itself at Target is only $15.  I’m not paying close to the same price for a new computer just for a magnet.

If I lose the bid on this then I’m just gonna keep checking eBay to see if someone else has it cheap.  If not then when I go to target for the gloves I might as well just buy a new computer.

Biking Accident

On By Michel McDonaldIn CyclingLeave a comment

I had a little accident on my bike today.  I was riding up a bridge standing up and all of a sudden the bike shifted gears and my leg slipped off the pedal and I fell on my left side which broke the handlebar bolt.  I had to call home to come pick me up then went to the E.R. and was told that I tore a muscle and I can’t ride my bike for at least 4 weeks.

I’m not giving up on it though.  I’m sure it won’t take a month because it’s feeling good right now but maybe a week or 2 I can take it easy.  But I’m changing my bike route so I don’t have to deal with any of the bridges at all to get to the bike path and back home.

It’s frustrating that this happened because I’ve gotten myself into a routine and now that routine has been broken but I’m confident that when I can ride my bike again that routine will come back to me.

A Bicycle Built for Two

On By Michel McDonaldIn Cycling, ExerciseLeave a comment

I suggested to Darrin today that maybe we should get a bicycle built for two.  He didn’t go for that one lol.  I think it would be cool.  We could have matching performance wear, helmets and we can have headsets for chatting.  And we can also use a Y adapter for my Dell DJ so we can both hear the same music while we ride.  I think that would be awesome.  This is what we would look like…

Bad Week for Riding

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

Well today I didn’t get to ride at all because of the delivery mix up.  Since they finally showed up at 1:45pm I thought it would be ok to go out but I really prefer to go in the morning after breakfast.  I’d prefer to get it out of the way and not have to worry about getting too hot.  What am I going to do in the summer time?  Sheesh I’m gonna have to get up at 4am in the summer time.

Tomorrow I have an appointment with the neurologist for my carpel tunnel syndrome and that appointment is at 11:30am which means I’m going to have to get up really early to leave.  I’m usually gone for an hour and half, I could leave at 9am and be back at 10:30 so I have an hour to get ready.  I think I’m gonna do that.

But then on Friday I have a doctor’s appointment with our regular doctor for a regular visit at 10am.  There is no way I’m getting up at 7am to ride my bike lol.  I normally don’t get up until 9:30am so I’m just going to go after my appointment, that is if I get home by noon lol.  We’re usually gone for 2 hours even when we have an appointment.  What’s up with doctors?  You come early and you end up waiting in the waiting room for 45 minutes AFTER your appointment time even if you were there half an hour early.

I know one thing is that I’m going to ride this Saturday and Sunday no matter what.  I know that I’m keeping my weight down (even though I’m eating a PB&J right now) but in order for me to really keep my weight down I gotta exercise as much as possible.  I’m talking about maintaining my weight loss as well as losing weight.  That’s been my problem, I can lose about 10-20lbs but then I start to just maintain it.  Even if I am able to maintain my weight I need to keep going.

Delivery

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I was supposed to get a package this morning and the driver rang the doorbell but the batteries in our doorbell are dead or dying so we didn’t hear it.  They left a note saying they showed up but there was no answer and so I got a call from my pharmacy who delivered the package saying that they will call the delivery company about a 2nd attempt.  They called me back saying that I’d have to wait until 5pm.  I told them that the delivery company will have to bang on the metal door and I can’t count on Darrin being awake to get it for me so I gotta stay home until they show up.

I just hope they come before too long because I can’t ride my bike if the sun starts to go down because I don’t like riding it at night.  First of all the generator on the bike gives me more resistance, which isn’t bad if I wasn’t so heavy I guess because then it would give me a better workout but I would rather get that better workout when I’m thinner heh.

If I have to just end up staying home today and not getting any exercise that’s fine I guess.  I know it’s going to take at least a year to get this weight off so what’s one more day eh?  This just means that I won’t take Sunday off.  Normally I like to ride 5 days a week and take 2 days off but I don’t mind riding 6 days.  I actually don’t even mind riding 7 days but I do like to give my legs a break every so often to help recharge them.

I was just hoping that this Friday when I weigh in I will actually show that I’ve lost some weight.  I don’t see any weight loss so far from last week.  I could weigh in every 2 weeks, it doesn’t have to be every week.  I mean, actually I could weigh in once a month.  It doesn’t matter when I weigh in, as long as I weigh in.  I would prefer not having to weigh in on a weekly basis because it makes me feel bad when I constantly weigh myself because I feel discouraged when I do weigh myself.

Edit: The package finally came at 1:45pm and I had plenty of time to go on my bike ride but just decided not to.  I like going at 10am when it’s still early.

Reorganizing Music Again

On By Michel McDonaldIn MusicLeave a comment

It wasn’t that long ago, like a week or 2 ago, that I had to download all the cd’s from my Dell DJ mp3 player to my computer then fix all the tags then put them back on my DJ but when I did that I didn’t count on the fact that their file names had something to do with anything.  For example.  If a song says 01 Politik instead of Coldplay – A Rush of Blood To The Head – 01 – Politik then when I go to make a playlist I’m not going to know who the artist is or even which CD that song is from.

Yes, I am really anal about things like that lol.  I don’t know why, I just am.  But it’s not for no reason.  When I ride my bike sometimes there are songs that are way too loud or they don’t have any sound at all then I have to pull over in the dirt on the bike trail, pull the remote control out of the bike frame bag and push the next button.  I don’t want to have to do that because it slows me down and brings my average speed time down too.  It’s also annoying to be riding happily then all of a sudden a song blares into your ears and then they start to bleed lol.  Or you don’t hear anything for a minute before realizing you aren’t going to but the song is playing.  I don’t really understand how that song got put in there.  Also there is 1 song that is in there twice from Uncle Kracker.  I don’t know how that happened.

So, I’m downloading the music to my computer and I will reorganize the names and write down what is going into the playlist and look at each song with a microscope to make sure my ride is full of good music and not annoying music.

Actually, I’d also like to just add the popular songs from certain CD’s, the ones that made it to the radio, this way I can cut down on the amount of songs in my playlist which is typically between 550 and 600.  It’s not going to be easy to weed through them all though, it will take hours, possibly days.  Well, at least I have something to do lol.

Day Off

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I wanted to ride my bike today but Darrin reminded me that I said that I was going to take the day off so I did.  Even though I really wanted to ride lol.  Oh well.  I probably should take the day off anyway because if I do this too much I might get too tired of it and stop.  I do like the routine of doing it everyday though.

When I was going to the gym 6 days a week in 2005 I had a routine for about 5 months and I wasn’t seeing any results and I started eating junk food even though I was trying so hard to lose weight.  I pushed myself so hard at the gym then turned around and ate twinkies and cupcakes.  I don’t want to make that mistake again.  That’s the reason I quit going to the gym.  That and it took 2 1/2 hours just to get there on the bus then 2 1/2 hours to get back home on the bus.  I would’ve been better off riding my bike there, that way I’d get exercise on my way to getting exercise lol.

R&R

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Today I decided not to go bike riding because I wanted to give my legs a chance to rest since I’ve been going such a long distance.  Tomorrow I will be going out again.  I’m just not sure if it’s worth riding 17 miles a day while I’m still in this stage of still getting used to riding a bike at all.  I mean it’s only been a month and even though I’ve seen 8lbs of weight loss so far I’m not seeing very much weight loss even with 17 and 18 mile days.  It’s nice to go a long distance to really step it up and everything but I just don’t see the results.

Now I realize that by me saying that I’m saying that I’m giving up on going such a long distance and I don’t want to say that but at the same time I think I can just do the 11 miles and get away with it for now.  I want to burn calories but not at the expense of causing myself pain and possible injury to my muscles.  I’m probably going to notice no weight loss at all this week and that’s possibly because I’m building too much muscle in my legs causing me to gain muscle weight so I don’t see the fat weight disappearing.

The first month was only 8lbs and normally I would be upset by that because 7lbs isn’t a lot to lose in a month, that’s 2lbs a week but at this point I’m just happy to not be in the 240’s anymore.  Being in the mid 230’s makes me feel that if I can get there then I can get to 220’s and so on but it takes time, a lot of time.  I need to stop worrying about the scale and stop thinking about it too much.

Tonight I decided that since I was weighing myself as 238 which is more than last weeks weigh in by 1 calorie that I would start eating salads for dinner, just to give me smaller calories for that meal of the day.  Breakfast I’ve been eating toast and a yoplait, lunch a peanut butter and jam sandwich or a ham sandwich.  Actually I’ve been eating 2 sandwiches but I’m going to limit myself to just 1 from now on and as soon as I get more yoplait’s on friday I’m going to limit my breakfast to just a yoplait.  I love coffee but I’m going to try to limit that too.  Darrin bought me this whole big thing of creamer so it’s going to be difficult to not be able to enjoy it.  I’m thinking for now coffee every other day.  I have been drinking a lot of water though so that helps big time.  Not the sparkling bottled water with flavor that Darrin has been buying from Albertson’s but just plain filtered water.

Well, I’m blogging this just before bed, I’ve taken my ambien already so I’m gonna go do the litter box then get in the shower and go to bed.

17 Miles

On By Michel McDonaldIn Cycling, ExerciseLeave a comment

Today I did the same route but only did 17 miles.  The reason why is because yesterday before I went on my bike ride I rode the bike to the post office then back.  It’s just 3 blocks from my house and I wanted to count that time that I rode because I’m greedy lol.  Anyway, here are my stats for today.

Distance 17.527, max speed 27.3, average speed 11.1, time 1:34:32, calories 813.7, fat calories 85.2.

Since this is going to be my route from now on this is going to be the last time I put my stats.  That is unless I decided to go further.  I’d like to just keep this as my current route just so I can lose enough weight so I’m lighter on the bike and I will go faster.  Once I’m faster then I can go further.