In case you were wondering: April, body weight, new bike,

I had a rough start to the season.  Thank goodness we have many, many races across as many seasons as our bodies and lives will endure.  I will not be whining here today. 
I have dedicated part of this season to getting lighter.  This is going well, for the Fort Ritchie criterium 2010, I have a goal of weighing 13 pounds less than I did on the morning of Vint Hill and Richmond.  I am so close already.

I have gotten really good at losing weight while training and increasing power.  I would like to share some of the fundamentals that must be considered.

1. Fewer calories, relatively, is stressful on the body.
2. The additional stress noted above requires more SLEEP.
3. Your mood will go ape-sh*t if you begin making serious changes and don't get enough rest.  Consider a mood supplement.
4. Chili's restaurant has a salmon entree that is fantastic "guiltless", just have some iced tea and go easy on the chips and salsa.
5. Power:  as you get lighter and stronger, you'll be hitting your goal wattages more easily, therefore, you MUST return to heart rate and RPE (rate of perceived exertion) to keep your intensity up.
6. Rely on the following foods for protein: fish, fish, fish, greek yogurt, eggs, egg beaters, regular yogurt, chicken, lean meats, protein powders
7. You will have to consider glycogen.  All things glycogen involve eating for recovery: plain pasta, veggies, oatmeal, all the grains like rice and rice-type foods, good breads.  Frequent feedings!

In other news, the new GT frame is hott but it still is not fit right for me; you'll see several of us on the new frames this year.  I ordered a new TT wheel, more on that later. I keep raising my FTP as my races and workouts indicate (Intensity factors above 1.05 and 20m and 60m outputs are pretty high).  After Tysons, which was my worst day on the bike ever (2 laps??), I raised my FTP again, my CTL has crept up into the 70s since then.  Nice.
By the way, I shouldn't say this here, BUT, I did the Lake Anna Olympic Tri. I am doing the famous Columbia Tri in May, sorry Bike Jam :-(  and The Nation's Tri in September, and the Army 10-miler in October, the Turkey Chase on Thanksgiving morning.