Intervention

I've been having a sort of rough time this week.

Which is not surprising. Invariably after making big decisions I find myself grappling with all the logistics involved in those decisions. This week both my Chem and Bio teachers talked about research programs, which are things I would love to do and would help my med school app, but I'm not sure how to make it work. I also had several of the docs be very supportive of my med school decision, an suggest that I should become a scribe, a job I would love to have, but if I did that then I would lose my benefits, something that feels overwhelmingly unrealistic. We had a team meeting this week where we talked about the race weekends, which sound awesome. But at the same time I'm not sure that logistically I can actually go on any of them. On top of all that I overheard two of the charge nurses at work bitching about my extra day off. Which makes me plan to take math next quarter seem impossible.

It probably doesn't help that I was already feeling behind with 2 missed work out already this week, and a weekend looming where I need to write most of an 8 page paper, study for a Chem quiz, take one of the dogs for a vet appointment, attend a 3 hour team ride, an still try to ind some time to spend with my wife.

I guess I struggle with feeling like I'm not able to commit and do my best at the things I'm pursuing, which makes me feel like I need to just give up or lower my expectations. Which is a hard feeling to have.

Priorities

My official training season kicks off this week, which means no more randomly missed workouts. For the next four weeks I need to follow the schedule I made alot closer then I have been, at which point I'll move on to the next phase of training and a new schedule/challenge. That being said despite the missed workouts I've been feeling pretty good on the bike recently. On Friday the team ride went up the hill by the zoo and it was significantly easier then the last time I tried it.
The hard part will be making sure that with all the training my commitment to everything else in my life doesn't slip. At this point I'm doing very well in my classes (top 5 in bio, top grade in chem.) Which is making me rethink med school. This is one of the first times in my life I've felt like I can do well enough in the sciences to be a competitive applicant. This will mean that I need to keep my grades high, and that I want to try to not work/ work minimally starting next year. The financial logistics of this are doable, but trying to manage my healthcare needs without insurance will be the hard part.
I've been particularly achy recently (which is maybe related to the weather) and I find myself taking more and more ibuprofen. I'm hoping that once I fill my sulfasalazine prescription that it will bring my pain a little more under control. Right now I find myself truly inspired by the girl riding on the college team who kept up with us on the climbs riding a 30 lb hybrid, especially when I found out she has symptomatic crohn's. It was nice riding with someone whose health problems are more intimidating and is making it work through shear hard work. I figure if she can do it, I can to. Which is an attitude I will need to tackle all the things I'm taking on

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.

The rest of the story

Like NKOTBSB I'm back, and hopefully this will be more permanent then a boy band. I've decided to start writing more regularly in here as a way to chronicle my training/racing, to try to keep track of my attempts to juggle; school, work, and racing, and to allow family and friends a little insight into the stories that they often only hear bits and pieces of.

In that vein I think it's important to put as much pertinent back story down on paper as I can, so that everyone is caught up.

Hi, my name is Colin and I love food.

About two years ago I was over 250 lbs (I had a no scales policy, so it's hard to say with any accuracy) and rapidly headed upwards. In september of that 2009 I started going to CSU Sacramento and bought a bike so I could ride to school. That first 3 mile ride felt like torture, and I can remember sitting in my first class pretty sure there was no way I was going to be able to make it home. Luckily I did (or else I would be writing this blog about living in a classroom) and it soon became a regular part of my life. Not long after as a convergence of things I had read (someday I'll post a book list) and things I had always felt I decided to become vegan.

Feeling the healthiest I ever had my wife and I moved to Portland Oregon last year and began integrating ourselves into a very vegan and bike friendly city. In December I had a return of what had been a chronic eye inflammation along with some acute back pain. After visiting what felt like hundreds of doctors, and batteries of tests I was diagnosed with HLA-B27 positive Ankylosing Spondilitis with concurrent Scleritis and Crohn's Disease. Which is a fancy way of saying I have a cluster of auto-immune problems all possibly associated with a component of my blood. In day to day terms, my eye has cleared up so what I end up dealing with is some back and joint pain and more regular pooping then the average person.

For the most part this hasn't slowed me down much. I joined a race team this past summer and got out to some team rides and for some racing. I also just transfered to Portland State University this fall to finish my bachelors degree, and joined the college race team as well.

Which brings us to now, where I am juggling a 36 an hour a week job, a full course load as a general science major, and trying to train for my first season of collegiate racing. I'll let you know how it goes as my life unfolds.

Forced Sabattical

This is a draft from April I found in here, I thought it would be interesting to post and compare to what's going on now.

In what has been the worst coincidence, the nicest weather in months has coincided with the rise of toe-zilla. This freakish toe swelling has left me sidelined long enough to evaluate the last few weeks of riding, and make me consider writing in my neglected blog again.

Two weeks ago I attended my first group ride. Portland Velo's Thursday rides are a standard route into Vancouver. The first time out there were only three of us, and I was the only one not currently racing. Since the ride leader was a cross between Lance Armstrong and R. Lee Ermey, we pushed the pace to 20+ mph for the whole ride, leaving my dangling off the back for much of the ride. Luckily despite my climbing like Wim Vansevenant, and descending like molasses the other two were nice enough to stop and wait for me from time to time. This wasn't the case this past week when a much larger group turned out allowing me and another equally befuddled rider to wander aimlessly through the 'couve hoping to find our way home. Despite this it seems like adding group riding to my schedule has encouraged me to push the pace in a way I struggle to do on my own, and I have seen a gain in both climbing speed and average speed for rides since I started.

The next step is adding a second weekly ride, I am thinking about giving Team Oregon a try since they are race focused. We'll see how it goes, and whether my rhuematologist clears me to go out on the bike again before cross season begins.