My first group ride

Bike the Bay 2009

I just did my first group ride. Bike the Bay in San Diego is a big annual event for all type of riders. It's unique in that the 25 mile course takes you from downtown San Diego, over the Coronado Bay Bridge, down the Silver Strand in to Imperial Beach and back up the East Bay along all the shipyards and navy facilities. I bought my wife a road bike for her birthday a few weeks ago, and she joined me on the ride.

Coronado Bay Bridge

The party atmosphere was great. There were all kinds of riders; some in costume, some serious looking types, many families. Going over the Coronado Bridge was a treat. It's a privilege that we seldom get here in San Diego. It was also the toughest part of the ride, climbing up in to the crest of the bridge. The rest of the course was flat and fast. Riding along the Silver Strand where the US Navy Seals train, I thought of how fit those guys are. Ah, to be young again.

Rocinante and Diane's new bike

At the end of the ride, we got food (yay!) and the bands started playing. They were handing out raffle prizes too. Didn't win.

Near the finish

I learned a few things about group rides. There are serious ones and there are fun ones. This one was a fun one. The pace is generally slower and it's really more of a social event on a bike. People are friendly 'cause most everyone is having fun. But by the time I got to the finish line, I was wondering if the fun ride was really my cup of tea. Don't get me wrong... I did enjoy it, and a lot of people really like them, but I started to get a bit bored at the end. I guess I'll have to see how I'm riding next year before I decide if I wanna do it again.

I'm down to about 245 pounds.

Join a bike club

I finally started riding back up the 56 bike path instead of going only one way. My rides are now routinely about 30 miles or so. I even joined a road bike club and started riding hard and some weeks I ride almost on daily.

Mira Mesa Cycling Club

I had the great luck of joining up with a local bike club, mostly Filipinos who are equally obsessed with riding as I am. If you ever want to ride with a group of guys that welcome anyone, even me, ride with the local Filipinos in your area. You’ll never meet a better bunch of encouraging guys to ride with. They seem to enjoy my improvements as much as I do.

I've lost about 20 pounds so far; I now weigh 250 pounds and am feeling pretty good. I'm riding about three to five times a week. I'm climbing hills. I've turned into a cycling maniac. I just can't get enough of it.

Cleats?

My Speedplay Frogs

So far I've been riding on regular pedals and wearing my running shoes. I'm still resisting that whole cyclist look. Mainly because I don't really look like one and so far, I don't even come close to riding like one.

I'm told (by real cyclists) I really should be using clipless pedals. I thought great, because my regular pedals definitely don't have cleats. Turns out that clipless pedals really mean that you have to clip in to them. Go figure. It's like pressing the "start" key to close Microsoft Windows.

My wife's cousin Eldon, who was a pro racer back in the day told me that I'm not getting the best experience riding my bike because I'm wan't using clipless pedals. With pedals that you can cleat into, you can pull as well as push on your pedals, with a goal of a smooth circular pedal stroke. The general idea is that you can generate twice the power as a push down only stroke. So I finally succumbed to the pressure and started looking for clipless pedals.

I have an unreasonable fear of getting my foot stuck on the things and falling over. Too embarrassing, never mind the possible injury. I really didn't think I wanted clipless pedals, but I respected Eldon's opinion and I started doing a bunch of research on clipless pedals.

There are a bunch of clipless pedal systems out there. There are specific ones for mountain biking, which are designed mostly so that you can walk on your shoes with some ease, and also not to collect at lot of dirt. Dirt prevents easy clip-in (see what I mean? clipless, but you need to clip-in). They're also used for general touring on a bike. For road biking, the requirement for easy walking and not picking up a lot of dirt doesn't seem to be as important. I guess I can understand not picking up a lot of dirt, but it would still be nice to be able to walk easily... I guess I'll understand better once I become a true cyclist.

I'm still in the "I'm kinda embarrassed to look like a road cyclist in spandex" mode, so I decided on mountain bike cleats. This of course meant mountain biking or touring shoes where the smaller mountain bike cleats are recessed into the shoe's sole for easy walking. So off I went... In the process, I learned about float. Float is the amount of side-to-side motion that the pedal system allows so your foot can swivel on the cleat. Float is desired by many riders because it can be easier on the knees. Cleat systems can have as little as no float, or 0 degrees, up to about 20 degrees of float. There is also free float versus centering float to worry about. How much you need is pretty much a personal choice. I decided I needed a lot of float. Don't really know why, but I figured my knees would thank me later.

Ease of clipping out was also a big concern. I think it is for most new riders. Who wants to ride up to a group ride, get stuck in your cleats and falling over in front of all those waiting athletes? Embarrassing. Also, they should be easy to clip into.

Shimano SPD cleats

The most common cleat system out there for mountain bikes and touring is the SPD system. It's also used in a lot of gyms on their stationary bikes for those new spinning classes. You can get SPD pedal systems with as much as 4 to 6 degrees of float. Prices range from as little as $40 to $50 for the system and up. As the cleat system gets pricier, they generally get lighter and have a few more little bells and whistles. I should mention that the SPD system was developed by Shimano and they also call their road pedal systems SPD.

There are other systems out there, such as Crank Brothers, Time, Look etc. I didn't really check those out because they're not as readily available here in San Diego. You kinda have to hunt for them. But it would pay to check them out if you're looking for mountain biking or touring cleats.

Speedplay Frog - Stainless

After trying out the SPD cleats, which were pretty good I thought, I ended up buying Speedplay Frogs. They're super easy to get in and out of, as the pedal is two sided. They've got a ton (20 degrees) of free float, which I'm sure I need and they're relatively easy to clip out of. So far I love them and I don't really care about some of the "why is he wearing mountain bike/touring bike shoes on his road bike" looks. Being able to pull as well as push was a revelation. I now have twice as much power to drag my big body around.

The one thing I found out about the Frogs, as much as I like them is that the little nib on the cleat (the part attached to you shoe) breaks off easily when you weigh 270 pounds. Replacement cleats are about $20-$30. The pedals themselves seem pretty indestructible. The systems run from about $100 for the chrome-moly steel version to $250 for the titanium ones. I got the middle of the road stainless steel version.

There's a good buyer's guide to clipless pedals on wheelworld.com with lots of useful information that can give you a good idea of what you need for the type of cycling you do. There's also a good section on clipless vs. clip-in and float.

The weight problem

When you’re trying to lose weight, it seems almost impossible. I need to lose about 80 pounds in order to get my Body Mass Index (BMI) into normal range. At 270 pounds, my BMI is 35.6; 5.6 points above obese. To get to normal, I’d have to bring my BMI down to under 25. The task is daunting.

I love food. When anyone asks her about our relationship with food, my wife replies “I eat to live and he lives to eat.” That just about sums it up. When I was twelve years old, I was as skinny as a rake and must have had a high metabolism, because I could eat anything in any quantity and my weight barely changed. I remember coming home for lunch when I was in high school (we lived five blocks from school). I’d eat two tins of tuna, put it over rice and then smother it with Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup. It would gross everyone out, except me. I loved it (I still love it!). By high school, I had grown to about 6'2" and 160 pounds and never seemed to gain any weight. My BMI had always hovered between underweight and normal.

Food was always a central theme in my family. I was born in the Philippines from Spanish parents. As with any Latin family, our lives revolved around food. We ate to celebrate, we ate to mourn, we ate when we were depressed, we ate when we were happy. Any occasion was a good excuse for a feast. My mother spends most her time in the kitchen to this day. She’s 80. What makes it even worse is that I belong to a couple of cultures that loved to eat! I remember as a boy living in the Philippines, I was always told never to leave any food on my plate... Think about all the starving kids in whatever part of the Philippines it was. When we moved to Spain when I was twelve, it was starving children in Biafra, or Ethiopia, etc. To this day in my late 50s, I still think my mom is gonna give me a bad time if I don’t eat every last morsel on my plate.

When I was fifteen we moved to Vancouver from Madrid, and I was into full blown puberty. My metabolism must have changed because I started putting on the weight. Still I managed to graduate from high school weighing just under 170 from all that tuna, mushroom soup and rice. Oh, and I ate bananas like there was no tomorrow. If you ever need proof that we humans are somehow genetically related to apes, all you had to do was monitor my banana consumption when I was a teenager.

During my college years, I quickly gained another 15 or so pounds and by the time I got out of there, I weighed about 185 pounds. However, I maintained that weight for a few years, even after I was married.

In the late 1980s, I began to put on serious weight. When I hit 195 pounds, I started trying out different diets, in desperate, yet mostly failing attempts at losing weight. I only wanted to lose about 10 to 15 pounds, but it seemed next to impossible. I tried the “rice” diet. I didn’t eat anything but rice for about a week. That was a total disaster. I gained weight! Then I tried the “soup” diet. All I had was brothy soups. After about three days, I nearly passed out from hunger. Naturally I had an eating binge after that. Then I tried the “popcorn” diet. That was another waste of time. When we moved to San Diego in 1990, I weighed 200 pounds and slowly but surely the pounds were creeping in. Having tried all the crazy diets, and realizing how futile they were, I pretty much ignored my ever-increasing girth. By the late 90s, I’d ballooned up to around 240 pounds. After a large lunch, I’d get really sleepy and was pretty much useless for the rest of the day. In 1999, I was driving home in the early afternoon and I fell asleep for a second or two at the wheel. I woke up a couple of lanes over, adrenalin pumping and wondering what the heck just happened. I was diagnosed with sleep apnea about a week later and have been using a CPAP ever since.

I was still relatively active, played tennis, sometimes skied, etc. But those activities began to hurt a lot more than they did when I weighed 50 pounds less. As the years went by, I got less and less active, and by the early 2000s, I reached 270 pounds. My waist was at 40 inches and my belly was as big as a watermelon (and just about as heavy). I had back issues, I wheezed my way through the day, getting tired at just about every little activity. My wife, who worried about my deteriorating lifestyle was constantly on my case about losing weight and getting healthy. I naturally resented her constant reminders, the furtive looks at my dinner plates heaped with food, comments about second and third helpings at mealtimes. The thing is, I never considered myself obese. I saw myself at the same weight as I was during my college days. Talk about deluded!

Thing is, I don't really eat a lot of junk. I rarely, if ever go to fast food restaurants. I seldom eat white bread or white rice. I ate my veggies just like my mom told me to do. But I was eating a ton of it at a time. What I didn’t realize at the time was that without exercise, there was no way to burn off the thousands of calories that I was piling on. I knew I needed to add exercise to my regimen. But I had to find something I liked and that I could do by myself. Running bores the heck out of me, swimming to me means lounging around a pool with a margarita. Cycling seemed to be the logical choice.

So here I go...

Flight of the Bumble Bee

It's time to get serious about biking. I'll never lose any significant weight riding short downhill rides. So here goes...

SR 56 and Three Witches Loop

Yesterday, I mapped out a route that I thought was relatively flat and would get me all the way home without having to climb any hills of consequence. I also wanted a loop as opposed to an "out and back" to break up the monotony (I go real slow). So I picked a route which would take me down the 56 bike path to Torrey Pines State Beach, north to Del Mar and back home through Fairbanks Ranch and Rancho Santa Fe on San Dieguito Road. Looked pretty easy.

I did my usual “get on the bike, open the garage door, yell out to my wife to shut the garage door as I bolted out of our driveway” before the neighbors could see me in my riding clothes... I mean kit. On the 56 bike path, it’s mostly downhill until you get to Torrey Pines State Beach. Then I turned right to head into Del Mar. I thought, “hey, where did this hill come from?” It turned out there was a climb up into Del Mar. It was pretty slow going, with all the cyclists on the road passing me by. By the time I got to Del Mar, I was pretty winded. But, I figured I’d already done most of the climbing. 

Was I ever wrong. Stupidly, I really thought it was gonna be nice and flat the rest of the way. Except that there are a series of climbs on San Dieguito Road called the “Three Witches” that should’ve been called Three Bitches! As I labored up the three hills in succession, I thought I was gonna have a heart attack. But the fear of humiliation was more powerful than anything else. I had to stop a couple of times and I pretended there was some mechanical issue with my bike. It was especially important to pretend I had a problem with my bike when some young twenty something female was going right by me chatting with her friend as she effortlessly climbed the hills. I was almost hoping for a real mechanical, like a flat or two so I could call my wife and ask for a rescue. But then, I really needed to persevere. So I clawed my way to the top of the Three B... Witches. After almost 3 hours and change I rolled into my driveway exhilarated! I had done a 30+ mile ride and I was still alive. Not only that, I felt great. I even lollygagged in my driveway OUTSIDE the garage. C’mon out neighbors! I don’t care that you’ll see me in tights! I think I'm a cyclist. 


Then I had a huge lunch.

A cross between a bumble bee and a whale, he said!

Flight of the Bumble Bee

During that ride I found myself in the middle of an organized charity bike ride (The Tour de Cure) and along the way, my photo was taken. I found the photo on the web this morning and paid an exorbitant amount of money for a digital file of the photo. I was on my Silver Thunder Rocinante, my tight shorts and my yellow and black jersey. My chin was hanging to my chest and I think I might have been drooling too. I’m so proud of the picture. I sent it to everybody I knew. My son, he’s so encouraging. He sent be a text message to acknowledge getting the photo with a note: “Pop, you look like a cross between a bumble bee and a whale!” I feel like Rodney Dangerfield... No respect. 

Ride!

My first ride!  The preparation was exhausting! Putting on the kit for the first time for a ride with some trepidation; finding the half dozen or so gels I was sure I was going to need. Wondering why I only had two bottle holders--I'm gonna need way more water than just two bottles!

After pumping up the tires, checking and double-checking everything, I was ready to go. I yelled out at my wife to shut the garage door as soon as I took off. I got on my bike inside the garage and bolted out of there before any neighbors spotted me wearing this ridiculous outfit... Oops, I mean "kit".

The first ride was about three miles. Downhill.

Boy was I tired. My legs were burning already and I hadn’t even started climbing any hills. I called my wife and asked her to come and pick me up. Not a good start! The only good news was that I could ride the car into the garage and get into the house before any of my neighbors spotted me.

There is a bike path running along state route 56 not too far from where I live in San Diego. A ride to the beach from my house runs about 11 miles or so. It’s mostly downhill. I decided to try for the beach on my next ride. I told my wife that if she picked me up at the other end, I’d take her to the little taco stand near the beach. I did not wanna do any of those crazy climbs because I was sure I'd die of a heart attack.

After a few of those one-way rides downhill, my wife was beginning to get annoyed at having to pick me up at the other end (She likes tacos, but not that much). I have to get more ambitious and plan a ride that is a bit more intense...

Popcorn man: A fat guy in Spandex

On the way back to San Diego from Palm Desert, with our convertible top down and my new bike sticking out of the back seat, I began to think about riding gear. Holy crap! Am I gonna have to wear skin tight shorts and jerseys? No freaking way! I’d look like the Michelin man wearing tight shorts and crazy sponsors all over my jersey. I could just picture my friends rolling over with laughter the first time they saw me in my riding kit. Just wasn’t gonna happen. No way. Nope, not ever.

Instead of going straight home, we decided to stop at the local branch of a bike store chain.

I definitely needed something with padding, even though I had no expectations of ever needing to father another child. But maybe I could get shorts that had the tights inside loose pants. So that’s what I asked for. There was this young sales guy and he asked me what kind of bike I had. I told him it was a Klein road bike and that I’d just bought it and needed biking clothes. “They’re called kits” he said. “OK” I said, “I need biking clothes.” Boris, (not his real name in order to protect the guilty) said “let me show you what we’ve got” and he proceeded to show me skin-tight shorts. I said “are you kidding me? Are you blind? Do you see what my body shape is?” He said “You can’t go around wearing mountain bike clothes on a road bike.”

“Why the hell not?”

“You can’t, it looks funny”

“I’ll look funny wearing that”

So he said, “c’mon, just try it on. My dad wears this stuff and he weighs 300 pounds”

“I’m glad I don’t know your dad”

This went on back and forth until I finally relented and told him I’d at least try it on. “OK, I said, give me a 2XL.”

“You need an M or an L”

“Are you kidding? You really are blind”

“No, trust me. You’ll thank me afterwards”

“No I won’t, I’m gonna be cursing you”

So I tried on an L. As soon as I bent over the waist rolled up and my belly was hanging over it. I looked ridiculous. I heard Boris and my wife call out to me asking me to show them. No way was I leaving that dressing room. I think I started humming “She wore an itsy bitsy yellow polka dot bikini...” I got back into my clothes and told Boris no way. 

So Boris then says “Let me show you bib shorts. They have straps that go over your shoulders and you don’t have to worry about the waist rolling up. You really need a medium, you know.”

So I tried on a medium and a large. The large looked only slightly less out of place on my body than the medium. Again Boris and my wife wanted to see them on me. I told them to go away. That changing room was my sanctuary.

I told Boris I’d take the shorts with the bib in "L". I figured I’d use them like underwear and have some other shorts over them. Then Boris said “you need a jersey, probably a medium.” I told him a medium was out of the question. “Just try it on, you’ll see.” I tried a jersey on. I couldn’t even stretch them over my shoulders. I tried a large. I looked at myself in the mirror and burst out laughing. I never the inside of my belly button was shaped like that! I finally settled on a somewhat loose fitting 2XL.

I walked out of there with my new bib shorts, size L, jersey, size XL and assorted other necessities that were supposed to make my riding experience enjoyable. Later, after a ride, my wife took to calling me “popcorn man” because as I peeled off my riding kit (I say kit now, I think I'm becoming a road cyclist), I would literally “pop” out and expand! It was pretty hilarious.

The next morning, I decided to go for my first ride in almost forty years. I put on all my new gear. I discovered I didn’t really have another pair of shorts to put over the bike shorts so I just shrugged and walked into the garage, incredibly self-conscious about my attire: Black bib-shorts/tights and a somewhat loose fitting yellow and black jersey. I almost couldn’t bring myself to get going, not because I wasn’t excited about riding, but I was mortified about my attire. It took all the courage I had to open that garage door and announce myself to the world. Not that the world was watching.

Turns out that I didn’t have all the courage I needed. What I did was hold the garage remote in my hand, get on my bike, open the garage door, yelled at my wife to shut the door and I bolted out of our driveway before any of the neighbors could see me.

Rocinante

Rocinante

The last few days of March of 2009 was the beginning of spring break for my teacher-wife. We planned to spend a few days in La Quinta, California, just outside of Palm Springs. That’s when it hit me. A road bike! When I mentioned it to my wife, I could see the doubt; yeah, but he’ll tire of it. The mountain bike will have a buddy in the garage. Nevertheless, she dutifully accompanied me to a few bike shops around La Quinta and Palm Desert. In one shop, the young sales associate told me he had lost 80 pounds in a couple of years of riding bicycles. That was encouraging. Of course I knew practically nothing about modern road bikes. The brands that I was familiar with no longer existed. You now shifted through the gears using the same levers as the brakes. Bikes now had up to thirty speeds! It was all very confusing. I really should have done some basic research, but what the heck, I had just had the idea, after all. Then I walked into a little bike shop on Highway 111 and I saw this beautiful bicycle.

I haggled a bit with the shop owner, and about twenty minutes later, I walked out of the shop with my brand new-old bike. I didn’t even test ride it. The shop owner assured me that it was my size. I was really ignorant about bike buying! But it didn’t matter, I had my new baby to try out.

I named my new bike Rocinante. Kind of fitting that I thought of Don Quixote and his quest for Dulcinea.  My quest may just turn out to be just as impossible.

My Rocinante is a 61cm Klein Reve X road bike painted in what they call "Silver Thunder".

The workmanship on this bike is superb. Typical of Klein bikes, the welds are so smooth, it looks like a monocoque carbon frame costing thousands more. Even the branding is painted on, they're not decals that are clear-coated. The cables are all routed inside the tubes and although not a lightweight, it's not bad at all for an aluminum bike.

Rocinante sports a full Ultegra drivetrain, ten speed triple. I think I need a triple for all the climbing I'm hoping to be able to do.

The rear cassette is an 11-27.

The seat tube also has this little elastomer insert that is supposed to reduce shock and vibration, making the bike more comfortable to ride.

I didn't really get fitted for this bike. At this point, I don't know too much about road bikes. It's been nearly 40 years since I rode a 10 speed. This one has 30! I probably don't need all of them or even most of them. I read something about real road cyclists not using triples (three chainrings up front) but then again, I'm not a real road cyclist... yet.

But I'm gonna take the next step to becoming one... I'm gonna dress like one!

270 pounds, 85 to go.

Am I gonna croak?

Here goes... My first post!

On my 54th birthday in October of 2008, I weighed 270 pounds (I’m 6’1” tall). I had just had my annual physical. I was sitting in my doctor’s office listening to him tell me there were some areas of concern from the results of my latest blood work.

He said my levels of Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) were on the high side. He also said I should go see a specialist to have a look at my thyroid, which also had suspicious blood test results. He referred me to a specialist for my thyroid and sent me to a urologist to have a look at my prostate. He was concerned about the possibility of cancer in both areas. To top it all off, my blood sugar level was on the high side of normal and he mentioned I was a good candidate for diabetes.

On top of that, I have Obstructive Sleep Apnea, which was diagnosed back in 1999. I've been using a CPAP every night ever since.

Nice birthday present! I began to think the worst! I was sure that if both my prostate and thyroid had cancers, it was already through most of my body; at least up and down my torso. I wanted to know now! It took until November to get appointments with the specialists. New blood work was drawn and sent to the doctors, who then scheduled me for another round of appointments. In December, I got scheduled for a prostate biopsy and a thyroid scan in early January of 2009.

The prostate biopsy was awful: The doctor inserts a “gun” into you-know-where and proceeds to shoot a needle into your prostate to take core samples; six times on each side. “It’ll feel like a minor rubber band snap” he said. At each “snap” I nearly fell off the examination table. Although I was told to expect it, the bleeding went on for about a month and was pretty disconcerting.

If I thought the prostate biopsy was bad, I was totally unprepared for the thyroid biopsy. I was going in for a sonogram and I thought “at least it’s not gonna hurt!” Well, the sonogram didn’t hurt; but the doctor found a growth covering 3/4 of my thyroid which he felt required a needle biopsy. I told him that that would be OK, and I asked him when I should schedule it. He said “We can do it right now”. No time to get myself into the right frame of mind! As he pulled out what seemed to be about a 10 inch long needle (it wasn’t really that long at all), he told me not to worry, there was anesthesia in the syringe and I’d only feel a little pin-prick at the beginning. He obviously had never had a thyroid biopsy in his life. As I watched that needle go into my throat, I got into a cold sweat and nearly passed out from the pain!

Of course, you never get the results of biopsies right away. I had to schedule another round of appointments (more co-pay $!) to discuss the results with my specialists. They were scheduled in late January. I also had to schedule a follow-up with my primary care physician, also near the end of January. As it turned out, both of my biopsies were clean. When I went to see my primary care doctor, he walked into the exam room and shook my hand and told me I was the luckiest man alive. He told me that in his experience, when a patient had two suspicious areas of concern, he could expect that at least one biopsy would be positive. Again, he reminded me that my blood sugar levels were leading to diabetes if I didn’t do something about it.

My wife had been on my case for years to "get up off the couch" and get fit. But I didn't see myself as obese. In my mind's eye, I was still as skinny as I was when I was 16. I didn't notice that I couldn't ski for more than a couple of hours at a time. I didn't notice that I got winded climbing up the steps to my wife's classroom. I guess I never looked in the mirror either... And I spent a lot of time "photoshop dieting"; you know, photoshopping the belly and chins out of my photos!

So here it is, 2008 and I need to get active. I decided I needed a bike. So I started hunting around for one. It's now March, 2009 and while on a weekend in Palm Springs, I was walking along a sidewalk in Palm Desert and I dropped into a bike shop. I saw my bike. I bought my bike. It was a thing of beauty. A used Klein Reve X road bike in absolutely gorgeous shape. It had a decent Shimano Ultegra drivetrain and although it wasn't a carbon bike the aluminum construction was exquisite.

I got hooked.