Where I've Been

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Weight loss

Weight loss is always on a cyclist mind… Well this fall it was on my mind too. I came back from Italy where I had been eating like it was going out of style and I wasn’t eating salad that’s for sure. Pasta, pizza, cheese, bread and more bread was on the menu for three weeks, I found the weight just jumped on, it didn’t creep. So when I got back from my trip I had it in my mind that I was going to lose the weight. The first five pounds were quite easy then I stopped paying attention to the amount I was eating because I started a new job and the five pounds popped back on.




I found that it really wasn’t what I was eating that was the problem but it was the amount that I was eating. I was still eating like I was training for peak season and training hard. I had to start cutting back slowly on what I was eating because at first my body thought that that I wasn’t feeding it enough and was storing the food rather then burning it.



I wasn’t really training much at this time maybe 1-2 hours a day for 5 days out of the week. It was my off season and the job I did have, had me working quite hard outside for 8-10 hours a day. I started to watch what I ate and when I ate and worked with a nutritionist to plan out the things that I could eat. I cut calories down to about 1200-1500 a day. I stopped drinking juice, stopped eating pasta, more fresh veggies and cut down on the meat I ate a day. I never thought that I ate a lot of meal; I only ate it for the protein. But what my nutritionist told me that you only need four ounces of meal, about half a chicken breast. I worked on the plan my nutritionist set up for me for a while but truthfully I got bored with it, tried of eating the same kinds of things and having the craving for fried, sweet, chocolate, cheese and beer whatever. The plan stopped working after awhile and I had to create something that worked for me.



It turned out that I didn’t have a problem with the things I ate; it was the quality and the amount that I needed to watch for. I hating seeing diets that cut fat, carbs or sugar out of your diet cause those three things I cannot live without. I still eat cheese, I can’t live without butter, bacon, cheese burgers, fries, chocolate all things that really aren’t that health but every once in a while are pretty damn good. Once I started this the pound slowing started to come off, then I started training again and they rolled off. Right now I am the lightest I have been since about late 2007. I am sure I have put on about at lease a good six pound of muscle since then also.



I am lighter then I was at race weight right now this year, that doesn’t sit well in my mind as I know that I should have been like this in the racing season. I did get injured and sick quite a bit this year and did put a stop on my training – and I was still eating like I was training. I eat when I am bored, thus I am writing right now so it keeps my hand busy and I will not eat more. With Christmas in a couple sleeps I still want to continuo the weight loss a bit farther, so that means it might be tough saying no to the extra dessert and chocolate. But that by no mean that I will not be splurging Christmas day, it will be on Boxing Day that I will hope on the bike or in the gym for a couple hours of guilt training to burn the calories off.



I am not saying that just by watching what I ate that the pounds came off, I have been working out at the gym or pool or on the bike very hard the last couple months anywhere from 2-5 hours a day. Between running, weights, swimming, biking and yoga I have kept pretty busy as well with throwing work in when I could. I have never, ever been a person to get up early and go work out; I have preferred to do them at night. But lately have been getting up early at 6:45am, (by my standers this is very early) and at the gym by quarter to eight for a couple of hours for running and weights. By the afternoon though I have to have a nap I am so tired I start falling asleep anywhere. That is unless I have a double shot cappuccino, dry, of course; then I am twitchy and giddy for a couple hours.

Cheers
 
JG

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

'Tis the season

It’s quite funny how time sneaks up on you and boom, it’s another Christmas, another birthday, another summer and another winter. Before you know it another year is up before you knew you finished this one. It’s come to the point with my self that I realize that I have choices to make and plans for the future to form. I’ve known this time was coming but like anyone just tried to put it off. But this doesn’t mean that I will be slowing down and getting a real job, a career for the future. It just means that I am planning for the time to come when life hits me over the head and says hey I think I’m ready.




Cycling, I think, will always be a big part of my life but there will come a time where I’m too beat up or old or both to keep up this training life style. I have been seeing some career planers lately just to get an idea where to take me life and to continuo my education. I’m not sure what I want to do once cycling is done, I’ve toss ideas around and every single idea has the same fact I have found, it that I want to be creative. Photography is what I have always been interested in – it has always been the one constant thing in my life that I have had a passion for. When I was a kid I always wanted to have different jobs such as a vet, a designer, sport therapist. But while my ideas changed and my sports that I was into differed from year to year, my love of pictures always stayed. I have a very good idea of the type of photography that I love to do, it’s very natural, I don’t want to start sounding like a hippie here, but its very earth based, natural lighting. Here’s a better way of putting it, clean and simple.



Well enough about that, Christmas is coming! What do you want for Christmas? Better yet, where has the time gone? I remember last years Christmas very well, it only seems like it has been a few months not a year! We are just staying around home for Christmas, no big family get together like the old days of Christmas in Cupar where we would pile 30 people or more in to G-ma’s and G-pa’s house. Back then, it was loud with crazy card games that lasted way, way too long, and a ton of food… oh and jam jam cookies by the gallon. There were no cookies left for Santa, we would stay up till midnight eating cookies, they were just too good to be left for a man that eats a ton of other cookies that night anyways.



I’m off to a semi-xmas party tomorrow night with the crew from Champetre Country, which I am very much looking forward to. It’s nice for a change to go to a Christmas party rather then work one. This year I hope I have the chance to have a night time horse sleigh ride because it is one of the most wonderful things to do around Christmas time. Snuggled under all the blankets, fresh air, power snow, the sound of the horses, ah it’s just perfect, not much more to say then that.



Merry Christmas / Happy Holidays



Cheers

JG

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

New BIke

Here is a picture of the new shoes


and the lovely pedals


And here is the look of the bike, My will be a bit different but heres the idea

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Face Lift

As the two of you can see (hi mom, dad), just gave my blog a face lift trying out some new ideas. Like it? Hate it? Love it? Bopp it, Twist it, now freeze! Sorry could help but put that game saying from the '90s in. Any ideas on things I can do better or can change or am I just that great with putting together an amazingly awesome blog!

      My blog really doesn't reach that many people and in the winter I think that I might even forget about it myself. I don't have it linked to facebook every time I post, guess I'm too shy and who would really read it anyways... I have had a few people ask me if I had a website, blog or something along that line and I say yes, and give the url.  I think I have only been ask that three times before, Yeah for my three fans!  And for the longest time my parents didn't know I had a blog, I didn't feel the need to tell them at the time because if I could only get my parents to read it I would be in trouble. Not trouble in the sense that they wouldn't approve in what I was writing but that I was worried that only two people for ever read it.  Not that I need people to read about my day to day life and my cycling and travel and my odd rant and spew on the weather, but it is kind of nice to know that your voice, (my voice not yours) was being heard now and then from an othersider other then family.

      My blog is millions of years away from ever going viral, which probably means that my grandchildren will have to keep up the writing for me, only if they loved me enough.  I will probably put in my will that if they want to get any money from me, and I planning on having a lot but spending it on bikes, cars and castles and men servants with accents before I die, if they want any money which is left over, which I know already by the rate that I spend at this point in my life won't be much, they will have to write in my memory about me in this blog.  They can update it and make it look nicer and maybe put some famous photos of me up too.

    I try pretty hard in my blog not to rant too much, because as much as people love rants and reading about them they can get annoying.  But there is some time nothing better then a long pointless rant that goes on and on forever and never finished.  I am a good rant listener, I am a good listener in general and I find rants in some people to be very funny.  Rants about their pointless lifes, dead end jobs, their crappy car, their bitchy (fill in the blank) person in their life.  I really don't like to rant because all that a rant comes down to is a person spewing the anger/ trouble/ problem to people that really don't care what you are talking about but find it funny to listen to you. (and no this little blurb what I just wrote is not a rant, rather its just a fact not a theory because I'm a girl which makes me right - plus its my blog)

     I must really have a sad little life right now becuase here I am writing to people that don't read this about a blog that no ones read, at one o'clock in the morning.  These pain meds that I am on from getting my widsom teeth out must really be making me go for a loop. If you knew me in person, which some of you might know, or maybe you don't because you don't know me as well as you think you do, that I'm really not like this kind of weird loner that writes in a blog to all hours of the night.  Heres the deal with me today, for those of you still giving it a shot to try to follow along with my mess of writing and spelling mistakes - bless you, you poor soles that have nothing else better to do than to read it. If I were you, which I am not, I would have quit reading this after the first paragraph. It is much more funner, yes I used funner, its one o'clock in the morning I can write like I want, for me to write then it is probably for you to read this.  Back to topic, heres the deal with my today, I got my wisdom teeth out this morning which I have said in the past blog post and this present one, the meds that I am one are super strong and I have no idea what they are called, all I know that the warning of drossiness is a lie, I have never been more wide eye awake.  Its like I'm jacked on caffine, though I haven't had any for like 40 hours! Must be some kind of record for a cyclist too!  I did have a long nap after I got out from the surgery, from 11am to 2pm.  That IV drip was still working for quite awhile after it was taking out.  So now I am not tired at all and my teeth and mouth hurt like hell, so I don't think that I even want to try to sleep. 
         
        I am sooooo bord (see the repeat of the "o"'s that means I'm really bord)  I watched a lot of TV today and I am sick of it. And that is sure saying something because its takes a lot of Tv before I ever get sick of it.  I can go 5 hours watching TV and not get sick of it, (yes I can be that lazy).  By 8 or 9 o'clock tonight I was going crazy, I even got my mom to play a game of battleships with me which I won I am proud to say. I haven't played that game in years. Truefully I haven't played board games in years, any game!  Then again I haven't read a book in about 8 months either, I can just see all the english teacher in the world shuttering at that fact.  Its not that I don't have books to read, I do.  I have about 3 or 4 unread booked in my room that haven't been touched yet.  The problem is that I always fine something else to do that is not nearly as heathly for me as reading a good book, like watching TV on the TV. Or watching movies and TV shows on my computer.  I have just started watching Glee in the past two week and I am now in the second seasons and have almost sank to becoming a Gleek - not yet though.  I have other shows  like supernatural, and america's next top model, community, gossip girl, being erica, the big bang theory and amazing race that I watch too.  As you can see I have too just time on my hands, with working part time and training full time and not going to school.  I need a life, like a real social life... any ideas?
     Wow I just looked at all that I wrote tonight, I really hope that you didn't read all of it because it was pretty much the most pointless thing that I have ever in my life wrote. Ah maybe if you look back at a post title weather that might just be the most pointless thing that I ever wrote, but this is sure coming in the top 5 I think.  Creative and pointless, wow my creative writing teacher in school would be so proud, this was just the kind of thing that she loved, loves? She still teaches I think...

G'night for now, look forward to a new post in a months time because that's about the time I will remember again that I have not writen for a long time.

Don't let them pull your wisdom teeth outs, it sucks
JG

Monday, November 22, 2010

New Team, New Stuff, No teeth, Old life

Well as usual I not good at keeping up to date with my blog. Here are so things that are new in my life. I newly join a team in the Vancouver area called Trek RedTruck Racing. I very happy to be on a team for the whole year, it will be a new experience and a good stepping stone for my future. I know all the girls that will be on the team so it’s not like I’m going to be thrown into a new group again. As happy as I am to be on a team I wasn’t that trilled to be going back to raining Abbotsford. I was hoping for a team down in eastern Canada but that will come soon enough. I did have a chance in joining a team in France but I figured at the time that it was just a little too far to travel for my first team. I really don’t speak French either so that would make life kind of hard in the beginning. At lease I will be in Canada when they speak English and it might give me some time to learn how to speak French better.


Since the team that I am on is sponsored by Trek I will be getting a Trek bike for the first time. I just ordered the new Trek bike, at a time saying that I have a Trek or rode one at a time would have left a bad taste in my mouth but I have come to face the fact that I will be riding one and there really isn’t a choice in that. Along with my new bike, I have ordered a new pair of pedal, Time Speed and they are white… classily right? Well I along with getting a new pair of pedals and bike, I am getting a new pair of shoes, which also are white and black to match my white and black bike. Matchy match aren’t I fancy.



Today though I have real news which doesn’t involve cycling of any kind, drum roll please…. I got my bottom wisdom teeth out today with a bit of surgery. I went in at nine this morning a little freaked out with the whole, needle, pulling, blood, teeth thing. I was frozen my well, it took about ten hours before I could feel my bottom jaw again. Being a bit nervous, that’s an understatement, I got an IV drip put in and I don’t remember anything which makes a good story not very good because I don’t remember the cracking of the teeth or the drill, the blood or the mess. But it is a good thing for me because I am now not scarred for life!

I only remember them putting the IV in and the doctor talking to me a bit, then I closed my eyes and could hear them talking a bit about nothing to do with pulling my teeth out. I think they might have been talking about how their weekend was, or more likely it was my imaginational making things up because of the drugs that I was one. The next things I knew, the nurse was telling me to open my eyes up and helping me up and out of the room. It felt like it only took 5 minutes which is not possible because I was in the office for at least an hour and a half. I am really hurting now though…. The drugs are all gone (sad face) and the freezing is gone (happy face) I can feel my lips and eat and drink without it going all over the place and making me a mess. I am just going to be on pills for the pain for the next few days. I will not be training either because of the meds and the stitches in my mouth because it could lead to more bleeding.

This is the first time that I ever got stitches, I think I have four to six of them in my mouth, I really haven’t wanted to look at them because its nasty. I was too jacked on meds at the office to ask how many I got, or how long the surgery took or to see my teeth that they pulled because that would have been kind of cool to see. Imagine the money that I could have gotten from those teeth from the tooth fairy!



Now totally off topic, here is a joke from my brother – What do you call a dog with no legs? Don’t matter he ain’t going to come anyways.



Well that’s it for now, cheers my wonderful people.

JG

Sunday, October 24, 2010

present life

Back to present life, cross season has just finished and I have finished pretty much unscathed. Besides a couple minor crashes I’m good. The last crashed that I had was in the pre-ride of cross provincials; I hit a hole that was covered by leaves and bit it hard. I messed up my neck and shoulder a bit, but the race still went pretty well.



I’m hoping to get to Tucson this winter for some training. It so hard to plan everything for a big trip, and get people organized to come also. But that’s life it’s not always going to be easy. Wow look at me getting all deep haha.

cheers
JG

Italy

Oh wow that’s all I can say, I’m so bad with keeping up with writing and updating my blog. Though in my defense I did break my computer screen and have to order a new one, but at the same time we did have three other computers in the house. I guess I can continuo off where I let off.



ITALY

The Race - We went to Italy for world juniors; it was thousand times better than going to Moscow the year before. The races didn’t go as well as I had hoped, looking back on the races I think that I didn’t get the right training this year that I need to do well. I was injured lots and sick about every two months like clockwork. In the month before worlds I was mostly was racing and resting and traveling there are not much training for Worlds.

The Food – The food we ate at our hotel was amazing, tasty and delicious, though we did have pasta lease once a day. When I got home I never ate pasta for three weeks. There are a couple nasty story about food from Italy. I ordered fried fish, thinking that I would be a fillet of fish. What came to the table was a school of baby fish with eyes looking at me, fins and everything. Let’s just say that I had a panic attack and couldn’t eat anything that night.



The Landscape – Italy is beautiful, whether you are in Roma or the seaside of Gradamara. I have the pleasure of being on both coast and I must say I love the “east coast” and there beaches. I only got to the beach once in the day time. That one time on the beach I burned so bad.



Well that’s it for now, Italy in a nut shell

JG