I think there's an entire forum for this, but I'll play along.

My name is Rick. I live in South Florida right now (west of Ft Lauderdale) and work in the telecom industry. no I don't do telemarketing. haha. I bought my first bike as an adult when I was stationed in Germany when I was 24. until then I hadn't really been on a bike since I got my drivers license. It was a Cannondale Killer V 900 that became my only means of transportation around base and off in the mountains for fun. that was 13 years ago and I just recently bought my first real road bike. I've been slowly building up my endurance and I hope to be able to do a century by the end of the summer. Which down here is late Oct. so far I've been averaging 15-16mph on my rides but I'm not worried about upping that until the endurance comes up. For my diet I eat FAILY clean. I work out at the gym also, so I eat a high protein, somewhat low carb diet. the only time I really eat a lot of carbs is the nights before a long ride. otherwise it's mostly chicken, sushi, beef and sides of potatos, mixed veggies or a small amount of pasta.