Return of the Wednesday Dehydration Ride

When I won the first episode of the Biggest Loser my coworkers put on, my bike was my not-so-secret weapon.  I am fortunate enough to live close enough to where I work that biking to work is a possibility.  I don't do it as often as I would like because a couple of the roads I use to get there are less than ideal, but the during the summer of 2010, I rode to work almost every Wednesday.  It was an easy way to wring that extra pound or so of water weight out of my body to get as low as possible for the Wednesday morning weigh-in.  This strategy didn't work nearly as well during round two because it was in the winter and I wasn't going to leave the house in the dark on two wheels.  It was also a cold winter last year and I didn't ride very much during that winter either.  This year, it's been so mild that even though it seems like I'm missing a lot of ideal weather, my miles are definitely up over last year (thank you Team Virtus Super Century!).  It's also been noticed on my waistline.  I haven't mentioned the Biggest Loser contests much lately because 1) I haven't won any weekly weigh-ins since Christmas, and 2) I've been stuck at about 210 for the last month.  This week, determined to break through that magic number, I decided to bring back my old friends, dehydration and starvation. 

After coming home Monday to the kids playing outside, I let my wife go for a run which lasted a fraction of the time it normally would.  She came home complaining about the 80°+ heat and the 15-20mph winds after barely running a mile or so.  At that point she wanted to cook dinner, so she promised me that I would be able to go out on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, my coworkers had brought their mountain bikes in and said they were going to Greensfelder, so I took off a few minutes before them, grabbed my bike from home and met them over there.   Unfortunately, in my rush to meet them, I managed to forget my helmet, pump, and gloves.  After the family ride the week before, I must've neglected to transfer all of that back to my car, as the pump was in the garage and the helmet and gloves were in the laundry room.  Since I was in the parking lot when I realized this, I decided to just ride without the helmet, and I've been on a few rides sans gloves lately (usually because I'll bring the winter gloves and get too hot), so that was no big deal.  I asked if my buddy had his pump with him, but after feeling my tires, I decided that they were probably okay.  He insisted that I check though, so I went ahead and checked them.  On the back tire, everything went normally.  However, on the front tire, when I went to unscrew the nozzle from my valve, the cap on the presta valve came off and flattened my tire.  I screwed the valve back in, and aired it up.  But when I took it off, the same thing happened.  Then I let my buddy try it.  Same result.  Finally, when we got the valve back on, I just went and got my CO₂ out and used that to fill it back up.  Fortunately, that worked without any issues, and I just had to hope that I didn't flat on the trail.  It was warm enough that day, by the time we made it around a lap of Declue, I had drank all of my water and was ready to head home.  Plus, with all the time we wasted with my tire, it was already 6:00.

Wednesday, I was a little late getting into work, so it was almost 6:00 by the time I got home.  With the weigh-in the next day, I was determined to break through 210, so I skipped dinner and went for a ride on the road bike.  I knew I didn't have a lot of daylight left, so I decided I would just ride east for a half hour or so (so the setting sun would be behind me), then turn around and come home as the sun would hopefully be below the horizon not blinding any drivers coming up behind me.  I made it up to Clayton Rd, and then turned around just short of Baxter.  Coming back, at one point I thought I saw a lightning bolt off to the south, and then as I was turning to get off of the bike trail I was on, I saw this amazing looking cloud.  It looked almost like a cross between the A-bomb explosion and something out of the Ghostbusters movie.

As usual, the picture doesn't do this justice, but it was one crazy looking cloud.

Sure enough, within the next hour or two, a couple isolated storms moved through the area, the ones that are more annoying than anything because they'll get your car dirty, but it's not enough actual rain to water the grass.

Thursday, I went in for the weigh-in, and my strategy worked.  I came in at 208.2, which wasn't enough for me to win the week, but I at least broke through the wall that 210 was starting to become.  Hopefully, I can get some rides in over the weekend to continue my progress.