{"id":2679,"date":"2017-10-19T14:17:43","date_gmt":"2017-10-19T20:17:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/?p=2679"},"modified":"2017-10-19T14:17:43","modified_gmt":"2017-10-19T20:17:43","slug":"900-miles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/2017\/10\/19\/900-miles\/","title":{"rendered":"900 miles"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the end of July, I had a routine doctor’s visit. Got on the scale. Clocked in at 170 lb. I hadn’t weighed that much since 1991. So I got back on my bike.<\/p>\n

I still remember when I was six years old and my father took the training wheels off my bike and convinced me to ride it. I was terrified. He ran alongside me as I rode around the block. (My little sister, in contrast, took her training wheels off by herself, leaned her bike against our father’s truck, climbed aboard, and rode off.)<\/p>\n

After that I got the hang of it, and bikes became an important part of my life. I started going on long-distance rides when I was 13. I did a little bike touring in high school, and I competed in some triathlons and bike races starting right after I graduated high school.<\/p>\n

I didn’t have a bike during the time I lived in Japan, and when I was living in Chicago for a couple of years after that, I had my road bike but didn’t use it much (thus the 170 lb).<\/p>\n

After I moved back to Austin in 1992, I got back into riding, and it was a great time to be a road cyclist in Austin\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthere were a bunch of then-pointless and unused roads that were like a playground for cyclists\u00e2\u20ac\u201d360, Southwest Parkway, Bee Cave, and so on. I hardened up and could motor all day. On one occasion, I rode the 165 miles to a friend’s place in Houston in 9 hours flat. Some months later, I did it again, 20 minutes faster.<\/p>\n

In 2000, a lot of stuff in my life changed, and I found myself cycling less and less, but in 2010, I started riding regularly again as I prepared for my Southern Tier<\/a> ride, which I completed in October that year.<\/p>\n

But that wrecked me\u00e2\u20ac\u201dmy upper body was emaciated when I finished. I remember at the end of the ride struggling to lift my 30-lb bike over my head. I decided I needed some kind of a whole-body workout. I signed up for a bootcamp class, and stuck with it until it petered out several years later. I never found a replacement that interested me, so I was back to a relatively inactive lifestyle (thus the 170 lb).<\/p>\n

As of today, I’ve logged 900 miles since that doctor’s visit. I’ve clawed back a fair amount of lost fitness, and lost the weight I wanted to lose. But I’ve got a long way to go before I’ve got the level of fitness I had when I was younger\u00e2\u20ac\u201dif in fact it’s possible to attain that again. It would have been better all around if I had stayed more active.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back on the bike<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cycling","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2679\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}