Recovery done - NEW BIKE DAY

So technically my recovery is actually done on 12/20/2016 after my 6 month post-surgery checkup, however I feel 99.9% recovered and have pretty much all of my range of motion back. This is all thanks to the excellent surgery by Dr Daniel L. Gaffney MD (GIKK Ortho), and the amazing Physical Therapy by the team at Edge Physical Therapy. Now it is time to focus on not wrecking for at least a year OK? :)

I feel like I have come a bit full circle the last few years. A few years back I dabbled in a half-fat bike as I was JRA curious (thats "Just Riding Along"), and then shortly after bought my first fat bike - A Salsa Mukluk. Another year or two later and I sold my cross bike, Mountain bike, and Mukluk in favor of a Trek Farley 9.6 carbon fat bike. I can wrap all of that up in one twitter posting:

Time to get away from "serious" competition and just ride for fun

Racing was giving me anxiety because I was never fully committed to it so I was always struggling to keep up. That means my ego was taking big hits at almost every race as I floundered off the back, and then winced going through race photos later looking at my voluptuous belly. Well I have done my JRA stint, and I am stoked to get back to treating competition like, well, competition!

Here is a short list of some of the reasons for the change of heart (I always hear "fart" when someone types heart BTW).

1. I need to get into a life-long routine of healthy eating and regular exercise. No more of this hit and miss crap, I need to be disciplined. I need to be healthy for my family!
2. I actually am enjoying being able to plan out a training regimen for my daily exercise that will work me towards a goal. Much different compared to when I was 22 and my goal was to just lose weight and gain muscle. 
3. The last two races I was at I had no anxiety before the race. Sure I knew I was there for fun, but that made all the difference in the world! Will there never be anxiety again? Of course I'll get anxious, but the main point is I believe I can have fun at the same time!

So I am losing body fat (more on that in a bit), and now bike fat :). Welcome to the stable 2017 Giant XTC Advanced 2!

Logan and I at Olympia picking up the bike!

Big thanks to Andrew at Olympia for putting up with my email storm and getting me setup with this sweet bike! I actually pondered quite a few bikes, but this particular XTC checks most of the boxes for me:

• 1X drivetrain (SLX 11 speed)
• Carbon frame (I have been spoiled by the Farley and my Fezzari)
• Modern geometry
• Quality fork (Step Cast Fox 32)
• Tubeless ready wheels and tires 

In the future the wheels will get upgraded as these Giant XC2 wheels are most likely north of 1,800 grams. The tires will get upgraded as well as these are the slightly cheaper versions of the Racing Ralph 2.25 tires, which means they around around 600 grams. As I type all that I have to giggle when I remember that I was racing on a fat bike whose tires were 1,200 grams each, and the rims alone on the Farley were 800 grams each (1,600 total, or 200 shy of this Giant wheelset and I'm not even counting the hubs or spokes on the Farley wheels).

As for my fat ass, I am also working on that. Earlier this year I had gotten down to around 185 pounds as I shared the no fat diet my wife was on before her surgery. Well shortly after her surgery I ended up killing my shoulder and going under the knife myself. So now my Wife no longer had to follow the no fat diet, and I dropped all motivation as almost my entire season went POOF. Those two things together netted me 211 pounds of #tylering that I am not a big fan of.

So on Monday the 5th I started my training plan in earnest, and also started tracking my calories during the week. In a single week I dropped 5 pounds, even with a weekend of terrible nutrition. Translation: My body wants to be lighter and healthier!! The challenge will be dropping the weight while growing my pathetic 217 FTP. Goals:

Get down into the 170s for weight and maintain that.
Back in the day when I originally dropped a cake-ton of weight I ended up at 172.5 pounds and pretty ripped as I was lifting quite a bit. If I can get to and maintain my weight somewhere around the 170s without the silly lifting bit, then I think that would be healthy.

Get my FTP up to the 260s
Right now I am sitting at 217 FTP. This last spring before I sprung my shoulder I was at 259, which when mixed with my 185 pound weight felt pretty darn good!

So my short term weight goal is to be in the high 180s for CIRREM which is in March, and then hopefully get down to the 170s for Dakota 5-O which is in September.


Welp, that's it for today's post. Have a wonderful day!