El Gordo Gauntlet, Week 1

Since the volcano story has been told, and I'm fresh out of other epic tales, its time for a recurring series on the on-going battle to shrink my girthitude.

In case you're just joining us late - fellow mountain biker Nick recently challenged me to a friendly weight loss "competition". We're going to blog our progress (or lack thereof) as motivation to keep the sweat flowing and the cheeseburgers at bay.

My progress this week has been emblematic of my weight loss odsessy to date: Up and down, up and down.

I've been mad pretty much all day because when I got on the scale this morning the number was not what I expected to see - especailly after riding 45 hilly miles yesterday. Not what I expected at all. I was down somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 pounds, but this morning that progress was all-but gone. I know, I know retaining water after being dehydrated from vigorous exercise and all that blah-diddy-blah. I was still pissed. I even gave the scale at the wellness center a good shake - it didn't work. I drank a lot of water too - and peed a lot. That did work, kinda.

Enough stalling, I'm down 4 pounds - 1.9%. Not good enough to keep from getting voted off the Biggest Loser, but I'll take it.

As for highlights of this week's exercise - I rode part of the Booneville gravel loop on Friday, 23 miles and the G14 route to Winterset. Both were fun and good workouts.

Several of these along the road to Winterset, nice. They mean it too I had several cars slow to 15 miles an hour to very gently pass me. Wow.

One of the famous covered bridges of Madison County.

Big hill in the distance (one of several)

When I rolled up on this scene I thought I was about to take a picture that would be the next Pink Floyd album cover - when (not if) they get back together.

One cow in particular was looking for a cover shot.

It didn't turn out as good as I hoped, but the contrast between the black cows, brown fields and blue sky was pretty cool.

Booneville gravel.