Today marks the kickoff of the B5 Challenge, the Big Bulky Biker Bodyfat Biathlon.

My initial weight is 287. I rolled an 8:50 in a three mile time trial.

Rocky, Fat Cyclist’s brother-out-law, weighed in at 187.6, and rolled an 8:28.

We both made lots of excuses for why we suck. Frankly, his excuses are better than mine. But we’re both pathetic. Our goal, is to become a lot less pathetic. I want to lose 45 pounds by May 1st, and improve my time trial to a sub 8:00. Rocky wants to lose 17.6 pounds. Before photos are enclosed below the fold.

Funny enough, on the way to the weigh in, our Ozzie Psychlist BIG Mike chirped up with his goals. He was inspired by our challenge, to set similar tough goals for himself. Then it struck me: why not open up the Big Bulky Biker Bodyfat Biathlon to our readers?

It’s pretty simple. You need to be a bicyclist, either experienced, returning or new. You need to set a weight loss goal for yourself, and ride a 3 mile time trial, stat. Ya see, it’s nice to lose weight, but we want you to be a better biker. So you can’t just lose weight, you need to do it in a healthy enough manner that your time trial performance improves.

You set your weight loss goal as of June 1st (i.e. “down 25 pounds) and tell us what it is, and provide your time trial time at that time. Every month, on or about the first, you email me your weight. Hopefully it’s going down. At the end of the time period, you ride the 3 mile time trial again, and you take a final weigh in. Your grade will be the sum of (percentage of weight loss goal achieved) + (percentage of time trial improvement). For example, if your goal was to lose 20 pounds, and you lost 10, you’d score “50″, as in 50%. If you rode a 10 minute three mile initially, and dropped a minute from the score (9:00) then you would score “10″ for a 10% improvement. Your total score would be 50+10, or 60 total. The winner will be the person with the highest aggregate score of weight loss goal, plus TT improvement.

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Now here's the thing. We aren't going to have sandbaggers here. If you weight 250 and your goal is to lose 10 pounds, we don't want you. That's too easy. If you weigh 165, and want to lose 15 to improve your climbing, and you're a 5'11" stickboy already, we'll consider it. Any close call goals will be passed upon by a committee of Fatty, Rocky, and BIG Mike. We want to keep the competition fair. Likewise, we don't want to see any 14 minute TT's, unless you weight 325 pounds and haven't ridden in years, have one leg, or are blind and rode the TT with a white cane because your guide dog was laid up with gout. We want you to stretch, folks.

What's the prize? Well, you shouldn't care. Excellence and competing hard against yourself (and other fat bastards) is its own reward. But for those of you who haven't reached self-actualization yet, Fatty, through his excellent sponsor Banjo Brothers, will put up some nice swag. Or failing that, when the Banjo Brothers blow up bigger than Surly and ditch all the rest of us including their sponsored blogger Fatty, I'll put up a nice prize worth not less than $30. You will also win massive recognition from Fatty with a mention on his blog, which is the highest trafficked bike blog in all of Christendom and the Caliphate, as far as I can tell.

The other thing you might take away from this is what BIG Mike took away - some folks to compete with in a friendly manner, to challenge each other on and to enjoy some good online fellowship with some like-minded bicyclists. You might find this helpful in keeping (or developing and then keeping) a do-able New Year's resolution, getting healthier, and having some fun.
If you are interested in competing, email me pronto at al_maviva@BEATDOWN_THE_SPAM_ARTISTSexcite.com. Um, just remove the part that fairly obviously doesn't belong in that email address. Do it fast though, because the competition is limited to 25 souls, and Fatty will be posting this announcement within a day, and his blog is heavily trafficked by cyclists who have similar goals and are likely to jine up. 25 souls that will be slimmer and faster on June 1.
Now, on to the pictures.

Here is a picture of Rocky. You will notice that he is already pretty thin.

Here is a picture of me, from the front.

Hey, not too bad, right? No way I'll lose 45 pounds. I just need to tone up, right?

Weeeeell, not exactly.

Yikes! What a blob.

You see, Rocky and I are not evenly matched physically. I think I've explained that I resemble an NFL down lineman (I am often mistaken for the Redskins great guard Joe Jacoby). Rocky resembles something like a human whippet, at least compared to me. This is why we aren't competing head-to-head, but instead developed that goofy percentage algorithm to allow what we think is an even competition.
Sorry about the headless photos, BTW. I do have to take minimal steps to preserve my relative anonymity. Besides, if I showed my face, you'd realize that I'm actually Leonardo DiCaprio (I'm sure you all know that I get fat between movies), and the web site would be totally swamped with 13 year old girls speaking AOL speak in the comments. And we Totlee don't wt tht 4 u.