First post!
Well, the content summary does a pretty good job of summarizing the intent of this blog. It's essentially a craven cry for attention in an uncaring world. That said, I hope that I have a few interesting things to say about how a former "middle of the pack" collegiate bicycle racer who became a strongly moderate rock climber and mountain biker, and is now, while facing his 40s, a job, and imminent fatherhood, trying to get involved in Adventure Racing (run, MTB, paddle, etc.) and might have some insights either for others in my position, or perhaps for my kid to discover using FutureGoogle(tm) when he's old enough to care.
Before I go too far on this blog I should say one thing: Body Mass Index (BMI) is terrible for assessing individual body composition. It's a research tool for assessing large populations, such as "high BMI individuals are at greater risk for developing type-2 diabetes". It's not very good at assessing whether YOU (or I) are specifically at higher risk for type-2 diabetes. The problem is that your weight is a combination of many elements: body fat, lean tissue, hydration, the squishy bits, the boney bits, and whatever you recently ate. Change any of these thing and your BMI will change. For example, somebody unlucky enough to be born with thicker bones will always have a higher BMI than somebody of similar height and body fat percentage.
Insurance companies, gyms, and generic fitness types love BMI because it's easy to calculate and makes it easy to scare otherwise healthy (if not fit) folks about how they are over weight or obese.
For the record my current BMI is 27.5, which is officially "overweight".
Body fat percentage is a much better metric, and according to my Tanita scale I am at 9-11% body fat (depending on level of hydration), which, according to most charts I can find on Google, is well within the "Athletic" end of the spectrum for a 40 year-old man.
So: an overweight athlete. Hence the blog's title.
OK, I'm off of my soap box now.
Anyway, I'm training for a 6 hour adventure race in late April, probably a couple of local shorter events over the summer (the fetus becomes an infant some time in July), and another longer race or two in the fall. If one of those races happens to be a Tough Mudder: you've been warned.
Hah - 'rant' as a keyword? I think that's the theme of 80% of every blog :-)
ReplyDeleteI once saw Blogging defined as "Never has so much, been written by so many, about so little, read by so few" :-)
Just kidding! Nice to see you writing and I'm interested to follow your ventures.
And yeah - people should just fork over $60 bucks or so and buy a Tanita scale with athlete mode. I actually find the hydration level the most interesting. For the record, my body fat % on the Tanita (at 59.9% hydration) is about 7.5%. My BMI (i just calculated it online) says 22.5 - which, yeah... I'm not sure what to do with that number.
The range for 'normal' is a bit wide. In fact - figure this. At 7.5% body fat and 168lbs I have 12.6lbs of fat.. So let's say I lost all my body fat and weighed in at 155lbs and 0% body fat. I'd be dead, but still have a normal BMI of 20.7 - awesome :-)