Katy Trail Bike Ride Bust, Weight Loss Update, and Other Stuff

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tardis portapottiMy plan to bike the Katy Trail did not work out as I had hoped. I started my ride last Tuesday and on that day biked a total of 19 miles in five hours. That is very slow for biking on a mostly level path. Just doing that amount wore me out. It was mostly overcast and windy, but I was still sweating and had to take a lot of breaks. Once the ride was over and I saw how long it took me it was obvious that either the bike (borrowed from my girlfriend) or me wasn’t up to the challenge of riding the Katy Trail.

I ended up getting a hotel room that night since it ended up being too cold to sleep in my car as I had brought my summer sleeping bag expecting warmer temperatures. Also, my legs were really hurting me and I thought sleeping in a comfortable bed rather than a piece of plywood in the back of my car might help ease the pain. In over 1000 miles of hiking on the Appalachian Trail I never took a pain reliever due to aching muscles, but on that night I had to take some aspirin to reduce the pain so I could sleep.

After taking the next day off to recover I tried the trail again on a rented bike. I figured this would show me whether it was me or the bike that made the previous ride so difficult. It didn’t take long to realize it had been my bike that was causing the problems. I rode 13 miles in 2 1/4 hours on the rented bike. It was much easier and much more enjoyable riding on the rented bike.

Since I didn’t want to rent a bike for long enough to ride the entire trail I came up with a new plan. I decided to return to KC and buy a better bike. I was lucky that there were lots of garage sales on the weekend and I ended up buying a Trek mountain bike for $15. It is a bit beat up and rusty from being in storage for a long time, but a test ride has already shown that it is much better than my girlfriend’s bike. I plan to return to the Katy Trail at the beginning of June.

When I took a day off after my bad biking day on the Katy Trail I got very lazy. I didn’t do any writing and I ate lots of bad food. This resulted in me gaining two pounds and getting out of my writing habit. After seeing my weight gain I’ve once again started eating better and exercising everyday. Today is my first day of getting back to my writing. I plan on having a long streak of days that I meet my exercise and writing goals.

April Safe Withdrawal Rate 39.23%

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I didn’t put any money into savings in April and I did not take any money out of savings in April leaving me with a 0% savings rate for April. I could have made a token contribution to savings in April, but since my future income is uncertain I decided not to add to my long-term savings. It makes more sense to keep the money in my checking account now and I can transfer it over once I have a steady source of income again. I don’t want to transfer money to savings and then have to take it right back out again.

My SWR rate for April was basically unchanged at 39.23% compared to 39.05% the month before. My goal is to get the SWR down to 4% so the lower my SWR is the better. That goal is probably many years from being met. The 4% SWR translates into having 25x your annual expenses in savings or 300 months of expenses in savings. Once I reach that point I will consider myself financially independent.

I have 30.59 months of living expenses saved which is basically unchanged from the 30.72 months of living expenses I had saved last month. I calculate my safe withdrawal rate by dividing the average of my trailing twelve months of expenses by my total money saved. When I don’t add any money to my savings the only changes to my SWR and months of living expenses saved are from my investment performance and the average of my trailing twelve month’s of expenses going up or down. My investments stayed about the same in April, but my monthly expenses were a little higher than usual causing the average of my trailing twelve month’s of expenses to go up. That average going up caused my numbers to be slightly worse than the month before.

I won’t be adding any money to my savings in May either because I still don’t have a stable source of income. I’m hoping that my investments perform well and I can keep my monthly expenses fairly low so I can improve my numbers even though I’m not adding to my savings. To make significant improvements though I’ll need a steady stream of income so I can put more in my savings. I’m hoping I will get another job this month or early next month.

Weight Loss Bet Update 1

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It has now been a month since I made my $3000 weight loss bet at Healthy Wage. I need to lose 30 pounds in six months or I’m out $3000. If I win the bet I’ll get $600 plus my $3000 back. My first month of weight loss has gone great. My starting weight was 226 pounds and I’m now down to 214 pounds for a weight loss of 12 pounds in my first month. I’ve been consistently losing about three pounds a week. I knew I’d lose weight on my hike, but I was worried that I would still be able to lose weight once I returned home. I’m happy to report that I am still steadily losing weight even though I’m now home. The hike made it easy to lose weight since I generally only had access to the food I was carrying with me and I was walking about ten miles a day with thirty pounds on my back. Now I can buy whatever food I want whenever I want and my exercise has been cut back to thirty to sixty minutes a day. Despite the change I’ve still been losing weight.

When I returned home I was planning to go on the Slow Carb diet. My girlfriend is doing Weight Watchers though and persuaded me to give that program a try for a couple of weeks. I haven’t officially joined WW, but I am using their system by using my girlfriend’s WW calculator to determine how many points I’m allowed a day and to track my points. I like this program since I can eat whatever I want as long as I count it. Of course, if I eat certain foods they don’t leave many points for eating the rest of the day and if I crave a certain food later in the day and don’t have the points then I have to wait until the next day to have it. This requires just a little bit of discipline which is about how much discipline I’m capable of. I still need to eat better. Too much of my daily points is going to soda. I had no problem giving soda up during my hike, but started drinking it again when I returned home. I plan to reduce my soda consumption to one a day and once I’m consistently on that consider eliminating it completely. I don’t think one soda a day would be that bad. The problem is one soda usually makes me want a second soda.

I’m hoping with my Katy Trail bike ride and improved eating my second month of weight loss will be even better. If it is just the same or close to the same I’ll be happy with that too. I’ll keep you updated of my weight loss progress at least once a month or possibly more if people are interested.

Biking the Katy Trail

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"No Amish Allowed" Katy Trail Sign My plan for my next adventure is to bike the Katy Trail. Actually, my plan is to bike it both ways. This is a 237 mile long trail and it has been almost ten years since I last rode a bike so this plan might be overly ambitious. Unless I get a job before next Tuesday though I will at least be attempting an out and back ride of the Katy Trail.

I’m thinking it will take me about six or seven days each way to bike the trail. I’m guessing that I will be able to bike about 40 miles a day. Back in 2005 I biked 17 miles on the Virginia Creeper trail in about 2.5 hours with several breaks. The Katy Trail is also a relatively level, crushed limestone trail so I figure in a full day of riding I should be able to do about three times as much mileage. A bike ride from nine years and 35 pounds ago might not be the best basis for establishing my current bike riding ability though. My other thought is that I was able to hike 14 mile days on my recent hike. Biking should be at least three times as fast as hiking and 14×3 is 42 so that is another basis for my 40 miles a day estimate.

My method of biking the trail does allow me to scale back my daily mileage plan if it proves to be too ambitious. I’m going to ride out and back to my car each day. For example, the first day I might bike from the Clinton trailhead to Windsor and then ride back to the Clinton trailhead. The next day I would drive to Sedalia and ride from the Sedalia trailhead to Windsor and then back to the Sedalia trailhead. The trail has mile markers so if halfway through the day I feel like my initial goal for the day is too far I can note my current mile marker and turn around there for the day. Or if my initial goal was too easy I could push to a further mile marker before turning around for the day, but I doubt that will happen. This method will give me a lot of flexibility on how far I bike each day.

This method of biking will also help keep my costs down since I’ll be sleeping in my car rather than staying at a hotel at night. I’ll still stay at a hotel or campground some days since I won’t want to go more than a couple of days without a shower. This method will increase my gas costs since I’ll be driving each day, but overall the trip will be relatively cheap.

It is costing me a bit of money to get ready for this trip. I’m borrowing my girlfriend’s bike which has the advantage of being free. Unfortunately, it also has the disadvantage of being pink. It is also a cheap Walmart bike which might not be reliable for such a long ride. Since I’m riding back to my car each day it shouldn’t be too much of a hassle to make any needed repairs or possibly find a replacement bike.

That is my plan for now. Since I’m returning to my car each night I’ll be able to continue blogging and I’ll keep you updated on how the plan works.

May 2014 Goals

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Since I’m back from my hike and currently unemployed it is a good time to set some goals for the month so that I’m not completely lazy. I’m only going to set two goals for this month and they are both pretty easy.  If these seem too easy after a couple of weeks than I will add another goal or two.

My first goal for the month is to exercise at least a half hour every day.  Now that I’m no longer hiking I need to keep exercising or I will stop losing weight or even start gaining weight back.  This goal will usually be met by walking, but I might also get some biking or running in this month.  It will also sometimes be completed by doing yard work.  This goal should be simple since I can just walk around my block a few times while listening to a podcast to meet the goal for any particular day.  Since I find walking and listening to a podcast to be enjoyable I don’t think I will have too much resistance to meeting this goal.

My other goal for the month is to write 1000 words a day Monday through Friday.  Since I’m unemployed I have lots of time to meet this goal.  I think it shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours to meet this goal each day.  I didn’t pay any attention to how long I spent writing today, but I am pretty sure it was less than two hours.  I haven’t done very well at writing goals in the past so I am looking forward to finally getting on the right track with writing.  My current writing streak is one day since I just started this goal, but I plan on keeping the streak going for a while.  I am giving myself weekends off from the goal, but I might go ahead and write on the weekend too if I feel like it.  I’m also giving myself one more out for this goal.  On days that I exercise for 4 or more hours I am excusing myself from meeting the writing goal for that day.  You might be wondering what I have planned that would lead me to exercising for 4 hours or more in a day.  The plan isn’t set in stone yet, but I will tell you about it in my next post.  A couple of hints: It isn’t a hike.  It involves a form of exercise I mentioned in this post.  Feel free to make a guess in the comments.