I too, was once young and fit.

jonny2004oldpueblo1

Photo is of yours truly at the 2004 24 Hours in the Old Pueblo. I raced solo-single speed that year. I got sixth. Someone handed me a glass of draft beer immediately upon crossing the finish line. It just felt right.

Seems like a lifetime ago.

That was me on form. Lately, not so much. I’m never going to get a guest spot on the Jersey Shore looking like that. Where’s the hulking pectoral muscles? Where’s the fake-bake? Where’s the hair products?

It is a sad day in big jonny land.

At least I have ten miles of Commercial Law in front of me to wade through… You know what? I’d rather be racing.

About big jonny

The man, the legend. The guy who started it all back in the Year of Our Lord Beer, 2000, with a couple of pages worth of idiotic ranting hardcoded on some random porn site that would host anything you uploaded, a book called HTML for Dummies (which was completely appropriate), a bad attitude (which hasn’t much changed), and a Dell desktop running Win95 with 64 mgs of ram and a six gig hard drive. Those were the days. Then he went to law school. Go figure. Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

18 Replies to “I too, was once young and fit.”

  1. education is more important than racing. i need to see more pix of the dc writers. p.s. how long should it take to finish a 100m MTB race? there’s one here in june i am contemplating.

  2. Judi, the factors you have to take in to a mountain bike race for time are immense. How fast do you race? How many climbs are there? I’m going to estimate quite a few hours if a road century takes most people (generally) around 6.

    I’m doing a supported mountain tour this summer. 240km in roughly 4 days (60km a day) out of Fruita.

  3. Overweight in winter? Two words: nordic freestyle. Kick yo ass. I’m usually in the red zone before the parking lot fades from view…

  4. Mikey is spot on. Skate skiing has two speeds. red zone and collapse. (at least until the technique is well dialed). Until then tho, a 2.5 hour ski is worth ~3000 calories according to my HRM and THAT my friends is all kinds of justification for firing down massive pizza & pints the night after.

  5. I too get fat in the winter, like a bear. Gatta have something to work on in the spring. Keep up the good work Jonny.

  6. big jonny, yeah, so you looked great and kicked ass at the races 6 yrs ago. Awesome. Now you’re in law school, and have a baby girl (if i’ve read this site close enough). Life/priorities change, man. When I was 32 I weighed 150, rode all the time and could hold my own in the sport class..whatever. Then I had 2 kids and shit changed. Rode/raced way less and gained 20 lbs. Time was prioritized differently, for my family and not on the bike. Was a big change for me, and bummed me out at first, but was the right thing for me to do. Now my kids are a bit older, 6 and 4 (read less dependent), and some other shit has changed. Anyway, got back on the bike regularly over a year ago (age 39), dropped 15 pounds since, and participated in a handful of races over the summer. Enough rambling. I guess my point is, things will change again for you..you’ll finish law school, your kids will get older and you’ll have more time on the bike. Before you know it, you’ll look and feel like that strapping young lad in the photo.

  7. Like Dan said. Fat in the winter and I console myself. I’m faster down-hill on skis (doesn’t apply to my XC sessions and my days on my tele boards are shorter).

    And every friday at work (I’m conflicted to call it work because I enjoy my profession, occupation, job, work, what you will, with limits) I say out-loud for all to hear “another week down, at this rate I’ll be dead in no time”. Done with a never-ending smile.

    It could always be worse… Taking my 11yo french-hound for tumor surgery tomorrow, may be her last day.

  8. get the law stuff done and you can go back to looking like a sausage in a charlie brown costume.

  9. Bobbo thanks for that.. but after consultation with the vet surgeon and probable poor outcome decided not to proceed, we’ll enjoy her while she has some quality to her life (more sausage).