Self-Aggrandizement?

Yesterday I received an anonymous comment on my blog entry Ride the Rockies Registration Closes Today. "Self-aggrandizement is a much higher priority," wrote the reader in response to a good natured comment my mom had posted accusing me of working on my blog rather than returning her call that morning.

At first I was embarrassed so I deleted the anonymous comment (and my mom's comment that prompted it) and changed the settings on my blog so that I can moderate comments before they are posted.

Then I looked up self-aggrandizement. I mistakenly thought self-aggrandizement essentially meant "shameless self promotion" (which in many cases is an accurate description of BEEFMAN Bloggeth!). But then I looked it up. According to YourDictionary.com, self-aggrandizment is "the act of making oneself more powerful, wealthy, etc., esp. in a ruthless way."

BEEFMAN has neither made me more powerful or wealthy (I wish) and I don't think I've ever promoted myself in a way that is ruthless.

Today I received a comment from a reader in Washington State on my post from a few weeks ago, Is Colorado Bike Friendly? "Hi Daren, enjoyed your blog on RTR 2008. We made the lottery for 2009, so now I'm a little intimidated/scared. Thanks for all the tips."

Thanks, Barb (whom I have never met), I'm glad you appreciated the tips. Don't be scared. Just keep training. You'll be fine...and you will have the ride of your life! BTW, we also made it into the lottery. Maybe we'll meet each other on the ride. I'll be the guy wearing the "Beef. It's What's for Dinner" jersey shamelessly promoting beef as an important part of a healthy diet!

I guess when you put yourself out there on the internet you open yourself up to random insults and criticism. I have received both. Some coward even went to the extent of e-mailing my employer to complain about my shameless self-promotion without contacting me. Really? Seriously.

I started BEEFMAN as a way to keep my friends and family (and whoever else finds it interesting) up to date on my exploits without clogging their inbox with e-mails and multi-megabyte pictures. I'm not sure if the anonymous reader is a family member or friend just messing with me. If you are, please identify yourself in future comments so I can enjoy the joke.

But if "anonymous" is someone truly offended by my shameless self-promotion, then just don't bother reading. And don't bother commenting. I won't post comments from anonymous cowards.

Daren

P.S. While looking up self-aggrandizement I ran across a blog called Self-Aggrandizement, the story of Joshua Bryce Newman, "a 29-year old film mogul, entrepreneurial wunderkind, and general smart-ass, living in New York City." The first thing you see when you open Joshua's blog is the tagline: "Now with 137% more unabashed egotism!" I love it...and have enjoyed reading the random thoughts of Joshua Bryce Newman. Thanks, Anonymous, for leading me to this site. Check it out. You'll hate it!

Ride the Rockies Registration Closes Today!

Registration for Ride the Rockies 2009 officially closes today. Our team envelope is being hand-delivered by Kris (with a "K") as I write and includes registrations from me, Patty, Karen, Kent, Big Dave, Little Nitin, and a first-time rider, Chris (with a "Ch"). RTR typically receives more than 3,000 entries but only 2,000 riders will be picked in the lottery. We're hoping Kris' karma once again pays off and our envelope gets drawn!

I got to reminiscing about past Ride the Rockies this week and loaded a bunch of photos into a slide show (above). This got me thinking about how I got hooked up with this motley crew...

Big Dave (at left) and I met Kris and Patty when we showed up in Grand Junction for the start of Ride the Rockies 2005. Doing the Ride was Dave's idea. We were neighbors in KC and had talked about doing a week-long ride like RAGBRAI or Bike Across Kansas. But then Dave moved to Denver and I figured it would never happen until one day he calls and says he's thinking about doing Ride the Rockies. I immediately said, "I'm in" but secretely hoped we wouldn't get picked. After all, I thought riding up "puke hill" outside of KC was tough!


Then one day I got an letter in the mail and when I opened it the first word I saw was "Congratulations!" We were in. I started training as best I could on the hills around KC. Then, two weeks before the ride, Dave calls to tell me he was not going to be able to ride. He had been riding one Sunday morning and his heart rate got stuck bouncing around 180-200 beats per minute. After a visit to the ER, the doctors were able to bring his heart rate back down but encouraged him not to test it on Ride the Rockies! He was, however, gracious enough to pick me up at the airport and drive me to Grand Junction, which brings us back to Kris and Patty.

Dave hung out for the opening ceremonies in Grand Junction and that night we ran into Kris and Patty (at left with me in Leadville with Mt. Massive in the background) in a bar covered in temporary tattoos and stickers that read "Team DFL." So I bit on the hook and said, "What does DFL* stand for?" And the rest is history. We became fast friends and I have ridden with Team DFL every year since.

The following year Dave moved to Texas but came back to ride with Team DFL and brought his friend Nitin (at left) from Kansas City. Nitin is a big talker in a small package. For example, in a recent e-mail he said, "I have decided to commit to this year's RTR, work schedule be damned. Let me know who else is up for it. I am nursing an IT band injury and a hamstring injury, so some of you might be able to keep up with me (yes, that is an old fashioned diss and a challenge). The Ghetto part of your brain should be screaming - 'Oh No, He Didnnn't.'" Oh yes he did!

Somewhere along the way Kris and Patty picked up Karen and Kent (whose 2007 ride ended on day one when he got right-hooked by a car while riding down Rabbit Ears Pass into Steamboat Springs on a loaner Serotta). The next year Kent won the grand prize Serotta given away at the end of the ride. Coincidence or karma?

By the way, Patty won a bike in 2007, so I guess it's either Kris or Dave or my turn this year (unless the newbie, Chris, wins!).

Chris and I are old friends from Kansas City who met while riding in the Kansas City MS150 back in 2001 (or was it 2002, Chris?) and later rode from Kansas City to St. Louis in four days (400 miles). We called it "Ride MO for the Cure" and raised $16,820 between the two of us for breast cancer research (which we donated to the Susan G. Komen Foundation). My mom and Chris' step-mom and mother-in-law are survivors of breast cancer and we both have young daughters, so it was a personal mission to do our part to put an end to this insidious disease. We had big dreams of turning it into an annual event. But, oddly, we couldn't really get the KC Komen chapter interested in what we were doing (until we presented them with a check for $16,820!). So Chris and I share the honor of being the only two riders on the first (and last) annual Ride Mo.

So that's the team for this year, that is if we get picked. We will receive notification one week from today. Stay tuned...

Ride on!

Daren

*I can tell you that DFL does not refer to the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor party nor is it text-speak for "dying from laughing." Hint: DFL refers to the last place finisher in a sporting event.

Training for Ride the Rockies 2009, Part II

In my last post I offered my training tips for Ride the Rockies...also known as "The Swollen Uvula Incident and other lessons I've learned over the past four years on Ride the Rockies." In doing so, I neglected to discuss one key element of surviving Ride the Rockies...nutrition. Providing proper fuel for your body is a critical component of training for and finishing Ride the Rockies.

This is one of the hardest lessons I've learned in my adult life...the key to leading a healthy, active lifestyle is eating right and getting some exercise! For those of you who didn't know me when, I once weighed a whopping 270 lbs! I was clinically obese.

[Above: That's me on the left with Santa Claus at the Agri/Washington office Christmas party, Dec. 1995; on the right at the KC MS150, Sept. 2001).

I was 30 years old, my second daughter was on the way and I was living a sedentary lifestyle. My idea of eating right was having a grilled spicy chicken sandwich with extra mayo, two slices of cheese and a large soda for lunch every day at the Korean deli next to my office on K Street.

At home we grilled a lot of boneless, skinless chicken breasts thinking we were eating healthy, but we coated it in KC Masterpiece barbecue sauce. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with KC Masterpiece (#2 ingredient is high fructose corn syrup). My point is that in order to make chicken palatable you have to add either mayo, cheese, barbecue sauce, or some other form of fat or carbohydrate to make it taste good.

So I changed my diet. Actually, I went on a diet with some encouragement from my younger brother who had begun selling a popular weight loss program with herbal supplements and shakes.* But I knew that, in the long run, if I was going to keep the weight off I needed to start getting some exercise, so I started riding my bike. I loved riding and went from 10 to 20 to 30 miles on Saturday mornings. Then a friend at Church of the Resurrection invited me to join a group of cyclists from the church training to ride in the Kansas City MS150 -- a two-day, 150-mile ride to raise money for multiple sclerosis research.

That Fall I finshed my first MS150. Eight years and seven MS150s, 10 sprint triathlons, one Ironman 70.3 and four Ride the Rockies later, I maintain that healthy weight and fuel my body with lean beef. Of course I also get plenty of carbs -- some good (whole grains and fruits) and some bad (sugars, liquids). But it's lean beef that fuels my body for long distance events and provides the provides the protein I need to build (or, at my age, maintain!) muscle mass.

[Above and Below: BEEF. It's What's For Dinner...on Ride the Rockies 2008)

Every athlete knows you need carbs for short term fuel and protein to repair and build muscle mass after intense workouts. What many don't know is that not all proteins are the same. Ounce for ounce, beef provides more essential nutrients and vitamins than other popular sources of protein. Beef gives my zinc for a healthy immune system, iron to help carry oxygen to my muscles (very important at high altitude) and vitamins B12 and B6 for energy.

The bottomline is that I don't eat eat much fowl these days. Why bother, when lean beef provides so many more nutrients and vitamins your body needs to stay active and healthy? And by the time you add something to chicken to make it taste good you're getting more fat than if you just grilled up a great lean Kansas City Strip or one of the other 29 lean cuts of beef.

Beef. It's What's For Dinner...on Ride the Rockies 2009!

Ride on!

Daren

*My brother switched to Melaleuca a few years ago and I am still one of his best customers! I love their sports nutrition products, as well as their home and body products.