Geekery

For anyone who knows me it comes as no surprise that I am something of a geek. My interests often become full on obsessions, and almost always this obsession will focus on bits of minutia that seem important to me, and no one else. In this past this has been; performance statistics of fighter jets, past and current members of emo bands, and names and locations of trauma centers in all of california. For this reason it is entirely within character for me to be so interested in the numbers side of cycling.  This is a post that I've been delaying making because I wanted to have all my numbers crunched before I put it up. But since that seems to have become an impossible feet I decided to let everyone in on the journey to decipher them.

First my current stats:

I am (as of this morning) 173lbs

My max calculated 10 minute power is 276w (which is pretty good)

My best calculated climb is 12.5 mph average on 0.6 mile 3% grade

Goals:

Since my 5 and 10 minute power is not bad the real place I need to work on improving is maintaining power over an extended period. This (along with a slight weight loss) should help my climbing times considerably.

Diet:

I've been attempting to calculate an accurate kcal goal for my day to be able to actually reach all my macro-nutrient goals while still maintaining a small amount of weight loss leading into this season. Unfortunately I find conflicting info depending on the source. The macro-nutrient goals as calculated from Orthopaedic Sports Medicine 3rd ed are 467g of carbs, 100-155g of protein, and 77.85g of fat. The same source suggests a kcal goal of 3979 for weight maintenance (weight in lbs x 23) While a Family Medicine textbook (I forgot the name) allowed me to calculate a BMR of 1840 kcals a day and then to multiply that by 1.6 for my activity level to get a daily goal of 2944 kcals. This huge range makes it hard to pinpoint a good target for myself, so I will probably start somewhere in the middle and adjust up or down depending on how my weight responds.

Aside from the numbers, I've spent some time thinking about why I have become more obsessed with riding recently. I think it has a lot to do with the other things that have been going on in my life. With my body so frequently dictating what I can and can't do it has become very important to me to have some time where I can make my body do what I want, and if it doesn't to know that with just a little more work I can get there.