Richard Ha writes:

I’m under 200 lbs., just barely.

I lost .6 pounds this week.

My goals: To lose one pound per week for 39 weeks, and to get my resting heart rate below 50 beats per minute.

Today’s weight: 199.5 lbs.
This week’s target weight was 199.6 lbs. 
I am .1 lbs. ahead of schedule.

Starting weight on 5/23/06: 214.6 lbs.
End goal, on 2/18/07: 175 lbs.
Since 5/23, I have lost 15.1 lbs.

On 5/23, my resting heart rate was 65 beats per minute.
Today’s resting heart rate: 52 beats per minute. *

* This goes down as one gets into better shape. Lance Armstrong’s is said to be 32. George W’s was reported to be 47 beats per minute. Out of shape, mine is in the 70s. My best was 52 many years ago and this week I’m there again.

***

I broke 200 lbs., and hit my lowest resting heart rate of 52 beats per minute this week. This is cause for celebration. I’m going to call our friends Dan and Linda Nakasone and invite them to celebrate at Alan Wong’s restaurant with June and me.

I was finally able to do an intensive bike ride and not have to take off the following days to recover. On Wednesday, Rodrigo Romo and I went up Banana Hill. It was funny because at the beginning, Rodrigo was holding a regular conversation with me. At first I answered, and then as we were further along I nodded and answered in three-word sentences. As we rode higher, I held up my end of the conversation by nodding vigorously.

Then, while I was trying to keep myself together, Rodrigo took a business call on his cell. I’m sure the person on the other end of the phone had no idea Rodrigo was on his bike climbing Banana Hill. As for me, I kept my game face on, taking really deep breaths in case I needed to make a one-word sentence.

But this was better than the first three times I rode the hill. This time, I did it in three intervals. The first stop, just above Damasco’s house, I hit a heart rate of 140+.

Rodrigo kept on cruising up the hill and although I kept falling behind, I did fairly well, for me. I actually rode straight up; I didn’t have to ride side-to-side, searching for flat ground in first gear. On that segment, I hit a 160+ heart rate. Very good.

I stopped on the intersection of Susie and Danny’s house road to get my heart rate below 120, and then rode up to the forest line where it climbed back up to 150 again.

This was the part that Rodrigo was looking forward to—the downhill. I asked him to go first and he took off, coasting downhill. I followed behind, making sure my brakes were working well. As I started rolling faster and faster, this question came to mind: “Are you sure you locked the front wheel down?” I wasn’t sure.

The faster I rolled, the more another thought crept to the front. “You do remember that you don’t bounce very well anymore, right?” That was what I learned when I crashed a dirt bike many years ago, and broke a couple of ribs and a collarbone.

So I balanced all those thoughts and went as fast as I dared under the circumstances. By the time we were three-quarters of the way down, I had fallen quite a ways back and pedaled as hard as I could to lessen the gap.

When we hit the bottom, I asked Rodrigo how fast he’d been going. He had hit 39 miles per hour, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t pedal at all. I hit 26 mph. But that’s okay, considering how well I bounce nowadays.

That was Wednesday. On Thursday, I got on the elliptical and did 500 calories worth at a slow speed, and on Friday I forced myself to do it again. On Saturday, I felt rested and I increased the intensity. This is a big deal to me because in previous weeks I’ve had to take two days off after bike rides.

Recently I’ve been losing a half-pound per week. I hope to resume losing a pound per week from here forward. We’ll see.