Bike Forums - View Single Post - My fat Belly, winter legs & Lungs

03-08-10 | 03:54 PM

#14

Jim from Boston

Senior Member

Joined: May 2008

Posts: 7,381

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Quote:

Originally Posted by nayr497

After a few years of riding year round, I still seem to forget how much the winter season can suck. Extra weight right around your middle, which makes riding in the drops a sonofagun, plus makes me feel insanely fat. Five pounds might as well be 50. Trying to climb in the cold with chilly legs makes me feel like a rickety old tin man. My legs tend to feel pretty good, but my lungs suffer.

I didn't even have much of a winter to put up with, but I'm still working on getting off the winter lbs. Ugh, I hate feeling fat, and being in Lycra on a bike makes one feel as fat as possible.

I’m a year round cycle commuter (14 miles) and train for, and ride, a couple of centuries from May through September. After my last century of the year occurring in late September, life starts to get decadent going into the late fall and winter especially by Thanksgiving, and further deteriorating during the Christmas and New Year's Holidays. By then it's hard to improve during the deep winter of January and February.

Not to sound too religious, but I have found Lent the perfect time to give up the bad habits and buckle down on a good diet, and start riding harder. By that time winter is slightly relaxing its grip. I allow Fat Tuesday to be my nadir. At the end of the following forty days of good living and harder riding, Easter can be a joy because I'm well on my way to better cycling and Spring is nearly here. By then I’m ready to seriously start training. Lent gives me a defined and structured, manageable and tolerable time-frame to get ready. That's how I HTFU from the Winter, as in "The Spirit is indeed willing, but the Flesh is weak."

Another more secular tactic to maintain fitness over the winter is to buy, or alter suits and sport coats to fit in the summer since it’s an expensive hassle to re-fit for the winter. The fit is getting better now, three weeks into my regimen, and I’m feeling noticeably more energetic.

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