Mike's Bike Blog

As you may recall from a recent post for preparation for the Tour das Hugel I wanted to go from 177/174 pounds to 165/170 pounds. I'm happy to report on yesterday's weigh in I tipped the scales at 168. That aspect of my training is coming along perfectly.

I've been able to do this by cutting out not necessary calories. Since I already eat fairly healthy to begin with I cut some calories out of each meal. For instance at breakfast I would have 2 bowls of cereal and a skim milk latte. That would be about 500 calories. I've cut the latte out and on a recovery day or a complete rest day I only have 1 bowl of cereal. Actually I look at what my training for the day will be and that will dictate how many calories I will consume. If I know it will be a lighter day than I try to pull back the calories a bit.

Other ways I've cut calories is by watching the amount of bread that I eat. An example is we had tacos one night and 1 flour tortilla is 130 calories. I can eat 2 easy if not 3 tacos. After 1 taco instead of having another tortilla I opted to wrap it in lettuce. 15 calories for the lettuce versus 130 for the tortilla, plus I cut out other crap that is processed in with the flour.

I believe it is these 2 combinations of cutting some calories overall plus cutting back on days I don't need to consume a full plate of calories is having the effect I'm after. It hasn't been that hard either, I'm not walking around hungry.

The other side of Hugel training is riding up as many hills as possible and I've been doing that as well. I've got my 11x23 cassette on for an added resistance training. I've been doing repeats up Far West and Mesa along with some sweet spot intervals in between. Last Sunday Dan and me did a little hill ride. We started off on the road between Hippie Hollow and Bullick Road and climbed that one and then took the LCRA access trail off of 620 down to the river and up and back up 620 to Steiner Ranch Road. Back up Steiner Ranch Road and ended the day with some hard pulls back on 620. We finished with about 2800 feet of climbing in 2 hours.