Success!
Goal achievement and what's next?

As you may have been able to tell from reading this I achieved a number of goals.

My original goal was to reduce my weight from 213 pounds to 170 pounds by the end of December. Today (September 11, 2003) I achieved this goal.

In reality I always had a number of smaller goals throughout my journey to reach this point. Here they are:

• Reduce to 199 pounds
• Reduce to 189 pounds
• Reduce to 179 pounds
• Reduce to 170 pounds
• Complete tour around Lake Erie successfully
• Reach the point where I can ride my friends to endurance exhaustion during an offraod single track ride. (In May I was always the one who was slow and exhausted even after short rides).
• Reduce my pant size by at least one size.
• Increase flexibility to the point where I can touch my toes while standing upright.

ALL of these goals have been achieved! I should have been in pants that were 40 - 42 inches in size when I started my plan. Now my waist is 34 inches.

I recently rode on two separate rides with good friends on singletrack. The first ride was with my regular cycling buddy who normally leaves me dying in the dust. This time I controlled the speed and set the pace. We set several new speed records on a set of singletrack and my limiting factor wasn't strength or endurance but rather my skill level riding on singletrack. This friend quickly told me that I was riding extremely fast and well.

My other friend is my sister's significant other. He last rode with me back in May when I was definately not in shape. He rode with me last weekend. His enduring comment from the ride was...

"You looked like an orange blur riding through the woods. Just when I was about to catch you it's like you had nitro and you would just disappear at mach speed)."

(I should mention that I was riding an orange shirt at the time).

My average speed riding on the touring bike on roads has increased from 22 km/hour to 28 km/hr. More importantly I am less tired climbing hills and my endurance is greatly extended.

Flexibility is improved. I can now touch my fingertips on the floor while standing. Still lots of room for improvement through.

So what's next?

That's the hard part. Here are a few goals I am considering.

• Reduce weight to 160 pounds and/or
• Reduce body fat percentage to 15 % and/or
• Reduce BMI to 22 % and/or
• Reduce waistline to 30 - 32 inches and/or
• Eliminate abdominal fat (there is still some remaining).
• Reach the point where I can ride my friends to endurance exhaustion during an offraod single track ride. (In May I was always the one who was slow and exhausted even after short rides).
• Reduce my pant size by at least one size.
• Increase flexibility to the point where I can touch my toes while standing upright.

My goals are more complex now simply because some of them may be unrealistic for me. As I continue to gain muscle mass it may not be possible to reduce my weight to 160 pounds. Perhaps a 30 inch waist line is out of reach? I think the flexibility goal should be an interesting challenge.

The other three goals should be reachable.

As long as I continue to have fun then they will be achieved.

A last PLEA for HELP!

If there are things that you feel should have been in this article or items that you disagree with please email me and let me know what you think!. I would like to improve this article as much as possible to make it an even better one!

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