50 Mile Bike Ride (Part 2 - The Journey)

When I decided a couple of weeks ago that I was going to bike 50 miles on the Heritage Trail, one of the first thoughts I had was "What makes you think you can even do that?" It's weird because I have rarely ever ridden my bike in the past 5 years and when I have it's been 30 or 45 minutes at most. Yet for some reason, I decided I could ride 50 miles which would take me at least 5 hours (more with stops) and I had no doubt in my mind that it was doable.

 I started thinking about this and it seemed like an appropriate metaphor for my weight loss journey. When I set out to get my lap-band, I didn't have any reason to believe I could lose massive amounts of weight but I somehow just "knew" that I would. I could envision myself reaching the finish line. 180lbs was always a number in my mind that stuck out. I zoomed to that goal and I felt unstoppable while doing so. And I largely attribute my success to the mentality that there was just no choice, I had to make it there. It seems as though my body followed my mind's lead and took me where I "had" to go.

It's the same thing with the bike ride. I knew I could make it 25 miles and I knew that once I made it that far I would have no choice but to ride the other 25 home. Sure, if I had an emergency I could have called a friend or a cab to drive me back to where my car was parked but that was a backup plan and certainly wasn't going to be necessary. I just felt like I had no choice but to complete the journey and so I knew that it would happen.

Here is where this metaphor becomes really significant. Now that I am (about) 180 and have been maintaining there (about) for close to 2 years, I still have no ability to visualize myself achieving a lower weight. As much as I want to get to 160, I don't have the same conviction that it's possible. I can't see myself there. I don't have that feeling of knowing or trust that I will get there. I know, oh believe me, I know that this is THE single biggest factor in why I still have not lost my final 20(ish) lbs.

Other issues have popped up that have caused me to gain a little but I know full well that I can and will get back to my 180. But from there, it's like an abyss that for some reason I cannot imagine there being an escape from. So, back to the bike ride... Being alone, in nature, on a bike, for about 7 hours really gives one a lot of time to ponder things. I definitely had a lot of "aha" moments on my ride and I think I learned a lot of lessons. Or maybe things I already knew sank in a little bit more. I paid particular attention to when the lessons I was learning on my ride also could be applied metaphorically to my weight loss journey. It happened more often than you might imagine. It might seem cheesy but keep reading all the way to the end, there's a big punch line (in the sense of life just jabbing me with one of those "oh I'll show you" type things) It'll be worth it, I promise.

Without Further Ado...

What I learned on my 50 mile bike ride:

1. Make sure you have everything you need for your journey ready to go at the start. I was pretty well prepared with 3 liters (plus 20oz more) of water, a flat repair kit and pump, a bunch of trail mix, beef jerky, cheese sticks, cliff bars, and way more stuff than I actually needed.

I only ate trail mix all day after starting the morning with some cereal and bacon. I guess I kind of thought 50 miles was longer than it was. And I thought I'd be more hungry along the way since I burn about 800 calories per hour biking. But as it turned out, the amount of water was just right and the food was overkill.
 

2. Know where you're headed. 

They were nice enough to put this etched in stone map out for people on the trail. It looks like an awfully long way when you look at this one.

3. Break a long journey up into smaller steps. 

Going 50 miles seemed kind of nuts. But going 25 didn't seem so bad. And then I saw that I only had to go 3.7 to be at Durango! And 9.1 to be at Twin Springs! And so on... 

Having intermediate stops, particularly with snazzy names, makes it not feel like such a haul mentally to get to your destination. 

It took me no time at all to fly past Durango and I stopped for my first bathroom/rest break when I got to Graf. That was the furthest I had previously ridden so it was exciting moving forward from there into uncharted territory. 

Trail Marker where I started at "Heritage Pond" - Dyersville, 25 miles, here I come!

4. Don't forget to enjoy the scenery and take lots of pictures. 

It's really sad that these photos didn't come out anywhere close to capturing the beauty of what I saw. The countryside was just gorgeous and I stopped periodically to snap photos on my phone.  It's really important to not forget what's happening along the way. I am glad I wasn't so focused on just simply getting there to the detriment of my actual trip. 

Beautiful landscape. That's a corn field.

View of Cornfields and Farmhouse 5 miles outside Dyersville

5. Iowans are inherently afraid of raccoons.

I don't have a picture to go along with this one but I have a story. Not too far into my ride, I came across another biker. He zoomed past me when I had stopped to use the little girls room on the side of the trail. Luckily my pants were up by the time he came by. I got back on my bike and tried to catch up with him, actually excited to find someone else on the trail. Maybe I'd have company all the way? Well, I never caught up to him but within a few minutes he was screeching to a halt and turning around in the other direction. As he passed me again, this time opposite of me, I asked what was wrong and he pointed at a raccoon. Yes, there was a raccoon just chilling in the middle of the bike path but it didn't look that scary. I told him I was just going to ignore it and I rode by without an issue. I was a little worried that he knew something about raccoons that I don't and this one was going to chase me or lunge at me and latch itself onto my throat or something. But nothing of the sort happened and I finished my ride in peace. 

6. Putting a banana in the freezer overnight does NOT (contrary to logic) make it a tasty frozen potassium snack. Instead, it turns out looking like slime and will splat open like a banana grenade when dropped.

7. When determined to make it to your destination. "Road Closed" signs DO NOT apply to you.

Seriously, there were so many obstacles on my ride...everything from a utility truck blocking the path to road closure, to blockades, to raccoons, to a kid with Down's Syndrome (seriously, don't ask!) but I was not letting anything stop me from making it to the end of the road. I mean, it looked fine to me! I still have no idea why they put this block up. There was nothing warranting it.

8. You better have enjoyed the journey (remember number 4?) cause sometimes the destination is just a big empty parking lot with no picnic area, no bathrooms, no water fountain, no lake, and surrounded by nothing but corn fields. Seriously. This was the biggest bummer. I thought at the end of my 25 mile ride there would be something worth seeing but nope. Just corn.

Celebrating being on the other end of the trail. 25 miles to get back to Heritage Pond!

View of corn after riding 25 miles.

View of the parking lot at my halfway point. Dyersville, IA. Yep, worth the ride. 

9. The last 10% is always the hardest. Ain't that the truth! It was when I had 5 miles left that I started feeling the first real soreness in my muscles. It wasn't bad though. I could certainly make it five more miles.

10. Scratch that...the last 3 miles are the hardest.

After breezing through my day at a much quicker pace with less rest stops than I anticipated, I was on track to be back at my car a full 90 minutes before schedule. I was very proud of myself and was already patting myself on the back for a job well done. Then pedaling started getting kind of hard. And then I noticed a noise I hadn't before. I got off to make sure I wasn't dragging a tree, dead animal, water bottle, small human child, etc. and of course, my rear tire was flat.

With THREE miles left to ride, I had a flat tire. Mother fucker. Just like life to do that too, you know? Knocking me upside the head just when I'm feeling all confident and proud.

So, I stopped to try to fix the tire since I did have a repair kit and pump. And a nice middle-aged couple even stopped to offer their help but it was no use. The valve on the inner tube broke while we tried to find the puncture and patch it. I had no choice but to walk myself and the bike the last 3 miles home.

This was perhaps the most valuable lesson of the day. Bring a spare inner tube, yes, but that's not what I mean. What I mean is that...sometimes those last 3 miles are harder than the 47 previous ones.

Sometimes just when you think you're home free is when the real challenge begins. Believe me, it was a FIGHT not to abandon my bike and find a main road and call a taxi. Or call my friend to drive 20 minutes to come pick me up and take me back to my car. On top of the frustration of being so close and hitting a major snag, my left inner thigh muscle had really started hurting in those last few miles and every step I walked was painful. And you can only walk so far while dragging a flat-tired bike along with you. AND every time you forget for a moment that the bike is there, your leg rams full force into the pedal. I was close to crying. I had to take 2 rest breaks in those last 3 miles when I'd gone 10-15 miles between breaks all day. I felt nearly crushed by the distance still in front of me and every time a biker would come zooming by I would feel bitter and annoyed. But not finishing was not an option.

Sometimes the real accomplishment is how you finish the journey, not how you began it.

Sometimes it takes 5 times longer than you'd planned, or than you'd like, to complete the journey.

But ultimately I knew I was going to finish. I was going to get to say that I traveled on my own muscle from Dubuque to Dyersville and backand that I didn't quit when it got tough. I knew that if I kept putting one foot in front of the other that eventually I would complete my 50 miles even if it took a while and happened through sheer grit and determination.

This is so much like my weight loss journey, it's not even funny. This was like life saying "Hey, you want a metaphor? I'll give you one!"  It took me 9 months to lose 90 lbs and now almost 2 years later I've still got the last 20 to go. And I have to fight tooth and nail and be nearly perfect for each fraction of a pound.

The big question in my mind now is, how do I come to mental terms with my end goal? With the absolute certainty of reaching it no matter how long it takes? If I could just find that conviction, I would be unstoppable. I can do it when it comes to other journeys but this one seems so prone to just turning into an "Oh well, I've come so far, why do I need to go further?" Yesterday, I never seriously entertained the thought of finding another way to get home without completing my course. But for the past 2 years I've found every reason under the sun why it's ok to not finish what I started.

How do I find that missing element within myself? Or what does it mean if that element just isn't there and never materializes?

I have a lot to think about.

The 50 Mile Ride (Part 1 - intro)

2 weeks ago, while on vacation in Iowa, I discovered a trail that runs 25 miles between 2 cities. It's a really nice crushed limestone trail, flat for the most part, and mostly shaded. People walk, run, and bike this trail and it's well maintained with mile markers and even some very primitive restrooms along the way. I had brought my bike with me from home with the hope of enjoying it up here in Iowa so I took it out for a ride one day. I rode 5 miles down and 5 miles back, which seemed like a lot at the time cause I can't ever remember riding 10 miles before or at least being aware of having done so. But it was in fact very easy to do. I decided that day that I would make the entire 25 mile trip from Dubuque to Dyersville, resulting in a 50 mile ride. I started riding my bike every day for an hour and then a week ago I went on a 2 hour/23 mile trip on the trail. Having completed that and still feeling fine, I decided to just go for the 50 (with a week of 10 mile practice rides in between). This may sound crazy to other people. It pretty much sounded crazy to me too. I thought 50 miles would be a distance you'd really have to work up towards. But the more I rode, the easier going 10 miles felt and I figure if I could go 10 miles and then rest a little there's no reason I couldn't go 50 miles in one day. So yesterday I did, and here are the photos and travelogue to prove it. But first, I want to pause to talk about a few other (related) things. I have been following (more or less) the Medifast plan since July 29 now. Had been doing pretty well sticking to it or at least to a version of it that was workable for me. The lowest weight I'd seen on the scale was 184.6, which made me very happy, but days kept going by without any scale movement. I was discouraged and getting annoyed about that. That's normal for me though, just a part of life when I'm on a weight loss journey and it's to be expected. Doesn't mean I need to give up, I'm just saying yes, the frustration was there. One thing that isn't exactly normal though and that I haven't confessed to anyone until now is that ever since starting Medifast a few weeks ago, I have dreamed every single night that I had gone and eaten something off the plan. Some nights it was that I dreamed I'd eaten an apple. Other nights it was that I'd gone for chocolate or baked goods. But every morning, without fail, I'd wake up wondering if I had really done that before realizing it was just another dream. What this tells me is that my mind is way too worried about food. I mean preoccupied to the greatest extent. My brain is obsessed with good food, bad food, right food, wrong food, being on a plan or off it, being perfect or not. This is disturbing to me because this never happened even when I was in the midst of losing 90 lbs with my band. I wasn't dreaming about food and I really can't remember a time in my life where I have. Maybe once or twice in the past while on a restrictive diet but I'm talking about every single night, the same thing? No...this was definitely out of the ordinary. So, Sunday, knowing that my big ride was coming up on Tuesday and that I basically had no reserves of anything except fat to burn in my body, something in mind just kicked into gear and I started to want to eat everything. And I can recognize the difference between a craving that is irrational and just needs to be ignored and something that's coming from a different place. This was like a primal need. Like survival instinct. That's all I can call it. Sure, it might have been misguided but my body was shouting at me loud and clear that I needed sugar and carbs like I haven't felt in a really long time. I analyzed it a bit and decided to give into it because truth be told, I wanted to successfully complete my ride more than I wanted to be down on the scale this week. Thinking about it carefully, I knew that I've never asked my body to work that hard for that long as riding 50 miles would be. I estimated that I'd burn about 3600 calories (my heart rate monitor ended up telling me I burned 4,131). I would have to eat 5 days worth of medifast food to not be in a deficit there when you add my normal daily caloric needs to that. And who wants to eat 5 days of medifast food in one day anyway? I'm not saying I needed to eat 5,000 calories in advance of my bike ride, that's not the point. What I felt I needed was to have some reserve energy stores in my system so that I could actually complete my ride without fear of passing out or having to just eat medifast food continuously the whole ride. If someone knows more about exercise physiology than me, I'd love to know your opinion. But needless to say, I did go a bit crazy on Sunday with eating all sorts of things I hadn't eaten in ages (and it was FUN and amazing, by the way, and really scratched an itch to just eat and enjoy it) but moreover, I was barely hungry on Monday and by Tuesday, I didn't need to eat much of anything to sustain me on my ride. I made some trail mix with nuts, granola, dried berries, and chocolate covered almonds and I brought a bunch of other stuff with me like beef jerky and cliff bars but I really wasn't hungry at all on the ride and just had trail mix every couple of hours to make sure I had energy. I could definitely feel the difference as time went on and I needed to refuel. So where does that leave me? Well, this morning my scale was at 188. I know that it's inflated not only from the sheer volume of food I've consumed over the past 3 days, the fact that a lot of it was carbs which add on "water weight", and also the amount of water I actually drank. I drank 5 liters yesterday. On a normal day I drink between 2-3. I know it's going to take a few days for my body to recover from this incredible task and maybe I'll end up back down at 184. Or maybe not and it takes another week to get there. I am ok either way. I realized something very important in the past few days. I have goals that do not revolve around the weight on the scale. Being healthy, being fit, being able to just decide to go bike 50 miles and DOING IT. That makes me incredibly happy. It doesn't make me feel less accomplished because I'm still a bit pudgy. But in terms of where I'm headed from here, I am back on "the plan" this morning and I am not craving or desiring food that I shouldn't. It was great to get it all out of my system in the few previous days and now feel ready to be back on that path. One other thing I'm realizing... I think I need to stop seeing myself as the fat person I once was. I often find myself thinking things like "Hey, I did that pretty well for a fat person." But that's just not true anymore. I'm sure there are plenty of people who are not in good enough shape to go on a 50 mile bike ride. And, without more than 2 weeks of practice at that! I should be proud of myself and grateful to my body for taking care of me and allowing me to do things that I want. That's the way I'm feeling right now.

A slip-up as a victory

I don't know what came over me yesterday. It was my 11th day of trying to follow the Medifast plan very closely and it was working out well for me. I had lost 7lbs in the first week but I had stayed there for the next 3 days so I guess that was getting kind of frustrating. I never planned to go off of the plan to the extent I did but something just came over me and made me think it was a good idea. I also was more hungry than normal yesterday, probably because I had ridden my bike first thing in the morning. And I was also a bit bored and restless, which never helps. The combination of factors definitely added up and lead to this incident. I ate 1 spoonful of nutella, a super thin slice of a spice-bread, and 3 bites of apple pie. All in all, maybe it was an extra few hundred calories, if that. As soon as I had my little "binge" my first thought was that I had ruined my day and really should go down the road to Dairy Queen and get an ice cream. And then, my second thought was that maybe I had fallen off the wagon a little but it wasn't THAT bad and eating more stuff I know I don't really want wasn't going to make me feel better. This is a huge success in my book because I really cannot remember a time in the past that I've diverged from whatever my "plan" is and then gotten right back on track like it never happened. Normally it would be a spiral of junk food with the promise to myself that I'd get back on board the next day. And of course that one day would have undone all the progress I'd made up to that point and I'd be starting over and discouraged. This time was so different! Something shifted and did what I knew I should do instead of what my silly emotions were telling me in the moment. I woke up this morning and weighed and I am back to 187.4, from 186.8 where I'd been holding steady for a few days. But so what? I'm recommitted to my plan more than ever today and the best part is having the experience of straying slightly and not letting it become a runaway train. Each time I can do this it will make the next time a little easier and more natural. And of course there will be a next time. There will always be another time when I decide to eat something that isn't the best choice. But I can decide to do that and then continue eating well or I can decide to do that and let my entire day, week, or life go to "I-don't-care-land". I think learning to do the former is a much better option. So, I am really happy with my slip up experience and proud of myself.

Something to be proud of

The past 10 days I have not been perfect but I have been really, really good and feeling better and better about myself all the time so it's something to celebrate. Most importantly, I seem to have rediscovered that "will power" or whatever it is when my head is in the right place to do this. I feel as though I am back on the right track and that's really important to me. I see myself differently when I look in the mirror than I did just a week ago. Being in control of what I'm eating has a way of doing that to me. I wish that the scale would move more quickly. Don't I always wish that? I weighed in on Sunday 7/29 at 194.4 and today I'm 186.6. It's been so long since it consistently moved in the downward direction that I've forgotten some of the patience it takes to go a few days without any numeric progress. I keep reminding myself that as long as it's staying the same or moving down at all, then I must be doing something right. Last night I was lying in bed and could feel my ribs. I really think this is the first time in my life I've experienced that. For one thing, it's weird. I started thinking, "are they really that close to the surface that I can feel each individual bone? I'm not that thin. I still feel as though I've got plenty of padding to be lost. But maybe not in my ribcage area at least. I've probably said this before but it always strikes me as interesting and amusing that despite losing any amount of weight, there is just nothing I can do to change my large bone structure. Not that I'd want to but it just goes so counter to what I always believed. I thought if I could just lose enough weight, I'd be tiny. One of the things hitting home for me is that I am never going to be tiny. Learning not just to "accept" but to admire my structural largeness is an evolving journey but I think I'm getting better at it.

Recommitting

This blog is one of the tools I attribute my success to when I first got banded. Writing in it daily or nearly daily helped me stay accountable to anyone who might be reading and helped me process all that I was going through as my weight began to drop. I look at how very far I've come and yet I see how quickly I could slide back into old patterns of thought and behavior and easily be as heavy as I was 2 years ago. But no, that's not true, because the person I am now would not allow that to happen. The months since my tummy tuck have had their highs and lows but one thing I haven't written about or shared with many people is that I encountered a band complication back in March at my 2 year Band-iversary and had to get about 1/2 the fluid taken out. What happened was that I went for an upper GI study which I like to do once a year to make sure my band is still in place and working and it turned out that my esophagus was majorly dilated and that it was refusing to push food down into my stomach. I didn't have any symptoms of this (normally you'd see reflux, inability to eat solid foods, night coughing or vomiting, etc.) The only thing that I could point to as a symptom was the feeling like I needed to burp after eating or drinking anything, even small bites. Turns out that was the spasms in my esophagus as it tried to push food down and failed. I had felt this for a while and it never bothered me, I just took it as part of the feeling of having the band. As it turns out, you shouldn't really be feeling anything with the band. So my surgeon took out a good deal of my fluid, leaving me with 3ccs. The hope was that after a couple of months my esophagus would return to normal and start functioning. To be frank, this scared the shit out of me. At only 2 years out, with 75% of my excess weight lost, and after undergoing major cosmetic surgery and looking better than I could ever remember, my whole world could be ruined or so it felt. My thoughts immediately went to the worst case scenario of having to lose my band and either get a revision surgery or nothing at all, which would inevitable lead to weight gain. The good news is that after 3 months, I got another upper GI and everything was back to normal. A month later, I went back to my surgeon to see about putting more fluid in. I weighed 192 on his scale (same as my home one) and I felt like crap. I think the last time he saw me I had been 181 on his scale. To face your bariatric surgeon with a weight gain is not a happy feeling. Luckily, Dr. A didn't panic and tried to convince me not to either. With 68% of my excess weight lost, I am still double the "average" results for Lap-Band so Dr. A said to focus on losing that 10lbs again and then maintaining and not getting into trouble with my anatomy. Sounds reasonable, right? But no, it's not enough for me. The past month I have been trying so hard to just eat a balanced variety of foods, high on the protein, using good carbs like quinoa and hemp bagels. But it doesn't seem to matter. I spent from June 3rd to July 20th exercising heavily 5-6 days a week and tracking what I ate very well. The numbers should have seen me lose weight but they didn't. And I found it hard to stay on track for even a day or two without finding some compelling reason to cheat and have a little of this or that at work where the junk food grew on trees. I found myself feeling more and more out of control and I swear I will NEVER see 200 on the scale again so when I reached 195 I kind of snapped. Sure, it wasn't "really" 195, as I can keep telling myself every time I got a little bit higher. All it would take is a few days of good eating to bounce back down to my accurate weight because my body holds onto pounds like crazy when I'm eating carbs at all really and all the more so if it's heavy in sugar and processed stuff. But even if it isn't "really" 195, it's probably "really" 192 and that doesn't make me feel any better. That's it, I kind of snapped. I pulled out the medifast food I had put away in the pantry and found I had a little more than a week's worth. I began following it on Sunday (5 days ago) and I have lost 7 lbs since then but again, it's that normal water weight of starting a drastic diet program. I am back at 187, a number I am infinitely familiar with being at and remember a month when I was stuck here in the past. It's really funny how my mind works. Now that I see the scale moving in the right direction again I feel more motivated, I feel thinner even though I'm not, and I feel like success is possible. It's funny how opposite of that I feel when I see a higher number even though nothing on the outside has changed. Speaking of nothing changing, that's the weird thing about all this. My clothes still all fit, though some pants are more snug than I remember but I would have thought that gaining more than 10 lbs would have made a big difference. I guess it explains why on the other side, I can lose 10 lbs and not see a big difference. The difference is definitely there in my mind though as I perceive myself so vastly different based on how I am doing both with following a diet plan and the results on the scale. So here's the thing... I have been living at 1200 calories a day for 5 days now. This doesn't feel like starving and using the medifast food, I am actually able to eat stuff that resembles tasty things even if it's not really. I have been eating a bit more meat protein than the plan calls for but until I stop losing weight, I don't see any harm in that. So far I've been eating 4 medifast meals and a bit more real protein instead of 5 medifast meals and just 1 serving of protein a day. So far, so good right? Well the BIGGEST issue for me is sticking with something. I have got to stick with this for a few months to be able to see the change I want. I have got to believe that the exact same way I lost 85 lbs can work for another 30. My body hasn't magically changed into a machine that refuses to lose weight. Not any more than it once was that but at 85lbs more than I am now. I used to believe that I just couldn't lose weight. And then I did. And then I hit 180 and I started to believe I couldn't again. I know that my mind is my most powerful ally or enemy in this battle and I am determined to make it work for me again. So, here I am, telling the vast internet that I have slipped up, I have regained (which I said I would never do) but I am catching myself before it turns into a problem and I am recommitting to implement the changes every single day that will lead to my success. Please, hold me to it. I have a bad habit of breaking my word to myself but I'm 5 days strong and I want to be able to continue. I wish I knew what the trigger is that makes my head snap in and out of the game so easily but whatever it is, it's happened now. I will weigh 160 by October 31. Possibly sooner. Stay tuned for updates to hear about how I'm staying on track.