I was reading Steve Asche’s blog and saw he was still linked to my blog—which has been as dormant as Mt. Vesuvius. To my surprise, people were still commenting on the site and looking for new entries.  

I stopped writing because the internet persona of the “big fat rider,” while wildly successful for raising funds for LLS via Team in Training — over 12K in less than a year, it became a little odd to be recognized in public after finishing my fundraising campaign.  Why I stopped riding or dieting or exercising is a deeper couch visit that I will try to address as I continue my path. 

Pride is a funny and complex emotion—it is the emotion that kept me from exposing my life on the internet, yet there is not enough personal pride, to continue a regular fitness program so that I look and feel good about myself.  I will be as transparent as my pride will let me—for the pure sake of honesty and maybe a little humor. 

While my internet persona grew bigger then my comfort zone—I am now turning back to the same beast to keep me on track, motivated and honest with myself. I will not be fundraising in 2009 but leveraging the blog to feed the momentum, to achieve a day by day better fitness level.

I do not have scientific data to support this, but I am going to assume that people like me (large mammal types) experience the same weight loss and gain phenomenon—where you lose a truck load only to gain back even more—as if by losing the weight you reset your carrying capacity. My weight has sky rocketed and decreased and exploded and so on—my entire life and the last three years are no exception.  I have been passively watching my weight increase over the last 8 months and I am in full panic mode.  I want to arrest the weight gain before I reach or surpass my last high weight mark.

So I am back, not quite in the saddle yet, but I am committed and I going to leverage the motivation of the blog to build momentum and hopefully find the humor in it all.

My next Big Fat Ride, el Tour De Tucson, is November 21. This will be the fourth year I have ridden the 109 mile route. My first year was team in training and I finished with energy to spare. The second year was a near catastrophic failure but I managed to finish. The third year was my best effort—finishing the 109 mile ride in less than 8 hours.  I am behind in the training—but if I get on it, I could meet or beat last year’s time. (Another factor in my desperation.)

So welcome back to the ride—let’s get rolling.