- A little help from my friends -

The background: I weighed 140 pounds when I started this company. I was a fairly competitive cyclist (and though I don't like to admit it, triathlete also). I lived briefly (15 mos.) in the South where the average diet is comprised equally of fried things and beer. After 6 years of averaging 90 hour work weeks, I no longer weigh 140 pounds.

The more recent background: Maggy Backstedt is an instigator. Nick Crumpton is very grumpy and likes to take out his aggression on others, preferably his friends. At Interbike last year Nick was ragging on me non-stop about getting so far out of shape (growing business, 2 cross country moves, and a baby - let's see you do it Crumpy-pants). I pointed out that Nick was the same height as me, and weighed the same as I did, so he should shut his BBQ hole. Maggy took it and ran and somehow got a great dinner at interbike this year out of it - whoever is lighter at IB08 gets to choose the restaurant and the loser buys dinner with a bottle of wine, and that includes feeding a 6'3" 200 pound Swede. It's going to be expensive. I'm figuring something like $1,000.

Anyway - to the present - my friend Shane is helping me get back on form both for Cross season this year (more on the bikes in a couple weeks) and to smoke Crumpy. My goal is to be at about 140 to 150 for race weight, and that should put me well under what Nick can hit. In order to get where I want to be Shane is putting me on a bit of a specific diet to say the least. 1600-1800 calories a day and 130g of protien. It's crazy. I'm eating more nuts, beans and soy than you can imagine. Oh, I don't eat meat, so that makes the whole thing even more crazy. Fortunately I do eat fish - preferably raw, mmmmmm sushi - so that keeps me a bit sane. But having an afternoon snack of a protein bar with peanut butter on top is just plain weird.

Anyway, here's to my friends - Crumpy who is motivating me to kick his butt, and Shane for helping me get there...