I took off on the F5 this morning and did my loop out to State Highway 19 and back through Purtis Creek State Park. I ended up with 50 miles. I rode 110 miles in each of the three previous weeks. I ended up with 402 miles for March, which isn’t bad, but January and February were both pitiful mileage months.

Between the weather, a cratered disc in my back, bronchitis, and strep throat, I’m well behind the mileage pace I should be at right now. Nothing to do but try and get in some better miles in the coming days. I’ve also been ignoring my blog again. My mileage has been poor, and my rides have just been short solo rides that don’t seem worth blogging about. I never figured I’d be one of those who is enthusiastic about a blog for a while, then loses interest and stops posting, but that’s what it’s looking like these days.

The other news is my weight. At the peak of riding lots of miles and really watching what I eat, I got down below 185 pounds. I set that as my goal to remain at. I figured that as long as I stayed under 190 pounds, I wouldn’t worry too much. I set 195 as my do-something-about-my-weight-right-now weight. During the four years where I was riding 7,000+ miles, I figured out that I wasn’t going to put on much weight no matter how much I ate, and I eased up on my eating restrictions a lot. The problem is that I’m no longer riding 7,000 miles a year. I’m riding 5,000 miles a year. And at 5,000 miles a year, I can’t just eat whatever I want and maintain a healthy weight, it’s becoming obvious. I had long since quit weighing myself every day, but when I made that trip to the scale one morning last week, the news wasn’t good at all: 197 pounds. That’s too heavy for me. It’s back to trying not to eat everything in sight, and see if I can get my weight back to where it needs to be.

Today’s route.