Who I Am

I moved to Washington, DC in October of 2010 and have been here and there ever since. I was coming off a pretty hectic summer spent riding between 17 and 27 hours a week in the Alps and Juras in France and Switzerland respectively and a serious bout of manorexia that sent me all the way down to 153 lbs (more on my weight later). Having not done a high intensity ride since my last road race in May I really wasn't ready for cross and kinda sucked at it. I joined Raw Talent Ranch/CycleLife in February and you've most likely seen me around in one of their kits on one of the weekend rides or at races. I have a half sleeve on my right leg thats pretty unmistakeable and my nameplate on my frame reads 'Boner McGiven'

My Dad raced growing up so I've been around bikes all my life. By age 14 I was 6 feet 1 inches and weighed somewhere between 135 and 140lbs, but I never thought that my build would be good for any kind of sport. I spent most of high school trying to gain weight after a prom date with a less than stellar personality informed me that she could never date me because I wasn't muscular enough.

Fast Forward to Fall 2008 and I'm not 6 feet 1 inches and 248 lbs. I'm not the kind of person that just does something, I have to have a tangible way to measure my progress and get better. To be honest I never really liked lifting weights, but I never really thought of anything else to do. I did MMA for a while, but after the Ultimate Fighter TV show aired it seemed like I was just spending my time submitting frat bros that wanted to name drop the sport so they could seem like a tough guy at bars.

I ended up joining a small gym of elite powerlifters, olympic lifters, and World's Strongest Man competitors and found the sport of powerlifting. I'm too laid back to be a real meathead, but I liked the idea of having a goal, training to achieve that goal, and then having some measurable metric with which to gauge your progress. Herein lies a problem that you will see come up often in this blog: my weight. Powerlifters are typically short and stocky with short arms and femurs, or tall and massive. Elite powerlifters that are my height weigh anywhere from 275lbs to almost 350lbs at roughly 15% to 20% bodyfat (this is after cutting weight to make weight classes). I would have to be at least this heavy to put up any decent numbers and my natural bone structure and build make it virtually impossible without steroids or growth hormone. I used every single legal means possible to gain weight and at one point I was eating at least two full burritos a day just to maintain.

My health, however, was in the shitter in a big way. I was having sleep issues, my blood pressure was 160/100, my resting heart rate was about 85 BPM and I couldn't walk up stairs without getting winded. I could pick up 500 lbs off the ground plenty of times, but I was a waste of a human being and completely run down. On top of that I was constantly getting injured and thus never doing meets, and my training was becoming a burden in addition to my 18 hours of classes, my thesis, and my 5 hour a day intensive language program. At one point I was drinking 4 of the Blue Rockstar energy drinks a day; about 1600mg of caffeine.

I got sick of being a useless oaf so I decided to lose weight and that I did. I got down to about 220 lbs before I finally got bored of lifting. I was already commuting to school on a steel single speed and I always liked riding with my Dad and going to his races growing up so I figured "What the hell?". A local form poster gave me an amazing deal on a carbon S-works with DA7800 and I started driving out to remote neighborhoods to ride my ass off. I was slow, I could barely make it up hills, but I was having fun and feeling better almost instantly. With no aerobic base I wasn't destined to be very good for any kind of sustained efforts, but I just liked getting out there and going as fast as possible for 2 to 3 hours a day.

As I said before- I never do things just to do them. I don't waste effort on half-assing anything no matter what it is. I have to have goals or ambitions or competition; anything to keep me from getting bored. I started going on a few group rides and slimmed down to around 200lbs and did alright sometimes. I couldn't climb any hill of any type to save my life, but I could pull hard on the flats and I could beat tri dorks easily so I decided to start racing. I'm pretty sure the best I finished that year was mid-pack in the 5s and I was usually OTB, but I figured I would only get better.

I moved to Syracuse, NY to attend grad school and soon found that it officially has the worst winter in the United States. By this time I was about 180 lbs and slimming down quite a bit and finally didn't look like a complete Fred on the bike. The winter was hell, but I saved myself from insanity by buying a powertap and doing 9 hours of trainer workouts a week. When it was finally good enough to ride on the road in March I had gotten down to 170lbs and finally achieved a 300w threshold and could kinda ride up hills at this point. I flew to Arizona, entered a stage race, and finished 23rd out of 90 in the opening prologue (on my road bike, everyone else had TT bikes). The result was encouraging and I went full steam ahead with racing. Unfortunately for me there weren't many races in Syracuse. I got taken out in a circuit race while finishing 2nd, finished mid pack in a tough 3/4 road race, and then got into a serious bout of overtraining before moving to Europe.

I'll describe Europe in future posts, but I rode A LOT. I got my threshold close to 5 w/kg and actually became a pretty good climber on long, sustained climbs. I also looked completely emaciated and size medium bibs were a bit baggy on me and my weight was bordering on unhealthy. Despite being skinny as a teenager, I actually am a bit muscular/anaerobic for a cyclist (I have had British Natl Track coaches tell me that that my power files indicate that I should hang up my road bike for good and race the kilo or the points race) and I had pretty much lost all of my top end power and was looking mighty disgusting.

I gained some weight back after moving to DC, but in a good way. My top end power went back up to where it should and I started the base period at 165ls. I currently sit at 163, but my power numbers say that that's not actually too heavy to do well in my races and I've been steadily leaning up all around. I don't do this for a living so I have no motivation to be as light as I was again, especially if it means losing at sort of power. I still battle with my weight obsession and spend every day either worried that I'm too heavy, or that I'm getting too light and will lose everything I worked for. I can diet really well, but its an obsession that probably consumes too much of my time.

I'll never be a pro and probably never make cat 1, but I'm ok with that. Cycling is still fun and exciting and I don't want to let it consume my life. It can at times, but hopefully I can use this platform to make it more of a fun past time and less of a serious activity.