Losing

I first saw this article about a Lego model of the Serenity spaceship from the mega awesome sci-fi TV show "Firefly" back in November of 2012.

70,000 pieces, not one of them glued together.

The attention to detail was incredible, inside and out.

A lit cargo bay.  Seriously.  The whole thing took hundreds of hours and $7-10,000 in parts... enough to buy something equally as pointless, like say a Di2/disc brake equipped crabon cyclocross racing machine or a titanium fat bike.

He even went as far as making a replica cast of characters, complete with miniature snarkiness.

The thing that got me was that this thing is more than seven feet long but only weighs 135lbs.  At the time when I first read the article, I was sitting in front of my computer at well over 140lbs. Instead of marveling at this plastic engineering marvel and ultimate showing of fandom, all I could think was, "I wish I could weigh less than this Lego Serenity replica."

I normally don't get deep into the 140's until the holidays are over.   Every year, I go a little harder in the paint, and I run up the score just a little more.  The thing is, I started the game way too early this year.
Due to the fact that I made great bike race so early on in the "season" last year, I let myself go the rest of the year.  One success per "season" is all I need to feel like I'm still competitive at some level, but to make matters worse, I continued making more great bike race... for the most part.  One could say what I was doing was working, but I kept regretting all the near misses.  Places missed by minutes... in some cases seconds.  I didn't do much in the way of early morning training, my weight was really high (for me), and I did nothing about it.

Whatever.

So the day I read about the Lego masterpiece, I decided I would be lighter than 135lbs of plastic children's building blocks once again.  Making this decision before the holidays certainly doomed my early efforts.  It's like trying to take a shit on the fifty yard line at the Super Bowl during half time.  You might be able to do it, but it's not really conducive to your efforts.

Spits and sputters at the start, and by the time January rolled around, I was @145lbs... actually, slightly more.

An embarrassing challenge, but a challenge nonetheless.

I have not been exercising more than normal.  Short commutes, lazy day riding with friends on weekends, membership at the YMCA canceled a long time ago.

I am going to lose this weight by doing two things; reducing alcohol intake and the cessation of "sport eating."  Both are hard to do, given my proclivity to eat free food at work, ingest exuberantly at festive post-ride feasts, graze all day on the weekends, and kill time looking all over the house for the beer I just set down.

My recent efforts have born fruit.  I've woken up the past two days lighter than the miniature Serenity.

133.6 this AM.

I'm gonna go further with this.  As in all things I do, I would like to take this to an extreme.  I have a secondary goal and a tertiary goal as well.  These are not based on plastic miniature recreations of spaceships, but times in the past when I have felt like I was "in shape."

A shape that would not be considered funny.