Richard Ha writes:

On January 7th, I started on a program to lose a half pound per week.

Weight on Jan. 7, 2007: 204.5 lbs.
Weight on Sunday, Feb. 25th: 199.6 lbs.
Target weight today: 201.0 lbs.

I am 1.4 lbs ahead of schedule.

Last week, I wrote that I’m in training for a mountain bike Poker Run on April 15th. My plan is to be able to ride my bike for three continuous hours by then.

Today I rode for two hours and 35 minutes at an average heart rate of 126 beats per minute. I’ll probably be able to do three hours within two more weeks.

Although I was not able to go this week, I still plan to practice in Kulani twice per week. This past week, I did a cross country ride through the farm, going up and down four hills. This week I’ll add one more hill, and so on. The whole ride takes less than an hour.

It’s obvious to me, though, that the single most effective thing I can do to increase my performance on April 15th is to lose weight. So in between the heavy training, I’ll spend at least an hour per day burning fat at a very low heart rate. I say a “very low heart rate” because my objective is to avoid training so hard that it affects my training schedule. This takes a lot of self discipline. One needs to force oneself not to charge, and train too hard.