775 miles by bike.


In the nearly 70 days since my June 23 heart arrhythmia, I've ridden 775 miles. I'm shooting for 1,000 at day 90, when I have the cardiologist's permission to again have a drink.

I just plain wore out a set of tires last week. Here's a photo of me today, and here I am similarly attired a week before I landed in the cardiac ward. You can tell my face is quite a bit thinner.

But as for the midsection I have battled since I was 19: It's smaller, but overall I've lost only about 7 pounds. So much for the beer belly theory. I've transferred a lot of mass from fat to leg muscle, no doubt. I've burned somewhere around 45,000 kcalories in over 50 hours on the bike in the last 70 days, nearly 650 per day (that's a cheeseburger and fries at Mickey D's* every day for the last two months), and it's pretty frustrating to not be a little thinner.

But I feel great, and very strong--I did 20 miles in 1:12 on Friday, not really trying. I'll take that over thin and not healthy.

(*McDonald's nutrition information here, on a bizarre official webpage--be sure to turn your sound on and drag items into the "bag" to hear the creepy sound effect, like something a tiny microphone in a clogged artery might pick up.)


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