long ride & more calories

I rode my bike from Albuquerque to Santa Fe on Saturday. It was a heart rate controlled ride, keeping my heart rate at zone 2 or below. That ride is one of my favorite training rides. It totals 56.5 miles from my Mother in laws house on Eubank & Academy to my house at the State penitentiary just south of Santa Fe. It is a very mountainous ride through the East side of the Sandia mountains, my starting point in Albuquerque is 6500 feet above elevation. My destination, Santa Fe is the highest state capital at 7000 feet above sea level. Last year that ride usually took me around 4 hrs 45 minutes This year I smoked my old average getting home in 4 hrs 8 minutes. On top of that I felt allot better after I was done. Last year I'd of been fatigued from that ride, this year I felt great. Training's going great. Things are not only on track, but even better than I'd of ever dreamed.

I weighed in today at 189.2 pounds. Two tenths of a pound from my pre-Buffman & Squeaky race weight. I weighed in at 189 even after 3 bad diet days. One of my triggers for overeating is exhaustion. Another one is obviously hunger. I had both at the end of this week. Long story short I've been working way to much recently & it caught up to me throwing me into a 3 day binge. I was able to minimize the amounts I was eating somewhat which was a change for the better. Overall damage apparently wasn't that bad. At least that's what the scale told me this morning.

Last week I had experimented by dropping my daily calories from 2200 to 1900 a day in hopes of speeding up my weight loss a little. I was a little hungry most of the time, but I felt I'd be able to control it. I was wrong This was the other reason I went into that food binge. Not sure how much of it was exhaustion and how much of it was an entire week of slightly lower calories than I need. But I've decided to raise my calories back up to 2200. 2200 calories a day may take much longer to lose this last 8-13 pounds, depending on if I decide to stop my weight loss at 180 or 175. But I figure its better to lose it slowly than to fall off the wagon from hunger & start the downward slide back to 292 pounds. Besides, those extra 300 calories sure do taste good throughout the day;)