As a lifetime “skinny” kid it has been a revelation to deal with small weight issues in middle age.

As a relatively and sometimes frighteningly skinny person all my life, it is only in middle age that dealing with fat has become any sort of problem. The diet relied upon to pump my body full of fuel in more competitive days is now a betrayal of aims. Love handles that show up each Christmas season are proof of that.

But people who are born with heavier, more fat-prone frames fight the battle of the bulge from birth. All deserve some credit and words of admiration at some point.

Heavy wheels

The lesson of how good fat cyclists can be was drummed home last summer when a friend and I were riding on trails leading to the open roads west of town. Suddenly from behind us came a cheery voice and the whir of a bike chain in repose. “Hey, can we ride with you?” he asked.

“Sure,” we replied. And poked along at 17-19 mph through woods and over bridges till we reached the roads.

Both of our new friends were, shall we say, rather large around the middle. In fact they were rather large everywhere, especially in the thighs and butt area. Yet their cadence was quick, and form on the bike quite smooth.

Cranking

Off we went when the road opened up. Cranking it up to 22-24 mph, the two cyclists led the way into a solid wind for mile after mile. We offered to do a couple pulls and did so, but inevitably it was our portly friends who rode back to the front. 10 miles. 15 miles. We rode 20 miles with those two riders who showed no signs of tiring. In fact my friend dropped the hint that the 15 miles we’d ridden before hooking on with the two Big Guys was starting to show up in his legs. He was coming off a cold and a back injury, so we said goodbye and turned for home, which was still another 13 miles away. Frankly I was relieved. I was tired too.

Glancing back at the two big riders it struck me that here were two guys thoroughly enjoying themselves on the bike who did not look like the traditional image of cyclists. I look more like that. Tall, thin, 6’1″ and 170 lbs. Yet they were riding the legs off me. “Thanks!” I called out after them. One of them waved. I’m pretty sure they were picking up the pace as they headed further west. They’d been going easy on us.

The tarsnake of excess weight

See, excess weight is a tarsnake of sorts. One of those challenges that requires extra effort to overcome, yet builds a different sort of character as a result. In the end, you can’t really tell whether being fatter than skinnier is either bad or good. It just is what it is. Some change occurs as a result of training, and that is good. Better health generally comes from exercise, we can all agree on that. But there is no hard and fast line on weight that says one is too fat, is there? Each case is individual. We’d all like to shed our gut and love handles, but the tarsnake is that many of us like to eat and drink as much as we love to run and ride.

Kudos

Okay, all you fat cyclists. You are studs. Both men and women. Because I watched a stout female member of our club team absolutely ride off the front in a women’s CAT 1,2, 3 criterium last summer. Her low riding profile was countered somewhat by her prodigious hips, yet the power she exhibited made me want to cry. Literally. There’s no way I could stay with a rider like that.

Heavy running

The evidence for swift heavy runners is less common. The sports are so different in context that comparisons are not apples to apples between fat cyclists and heavy runners. At some point on a bike having extra weight on the downhills can actually be an advantage over lighter rides. There’s this thing called gravity, you see, and a heavier friend on our weekend rides is fond of chanting things like “Fat Boy coming through!” as he idles past me on downhills.

Weighty Mechanics

Was this gal a runner at some point? If so, she deserves admiration for her efforts.

I have run with heavy men and women over the years, however, and the mechanics are simply different than riding a bike when you’re so-called overweight. Once you get a bike rolling, momentum helps. But there is no such thing in running. Even on downhills, momentum can be a tricky thing to manage when you’re heavy. The knees bear the weight, and a braking motion takes over.

Marathons on down

But so what if heavy runners aren’t the swiftest in the lot? I still see plenty of heavy types completing marathons. If we consider that endeavor there should be a degree of envy at their determination. After all, it is much harder to run 26.2 miles, or 13.1 miles, or 6.2 miles or 5.1 miles when you weigh 190 lbs. than if you weigh 130.

My cousin from Florida stands 6’2″and weighs over 200 lbs. Yet he loves running and has continued to do so for more than 30 years. A friend from childhood was even bigger when he started. In fact he was the neighborhood “fat kid” growing up, a roly-poly tumbler of a blubberbutt we loved to tease about rolls of fat. Yet he decided in his 20s that he could run, and shed some weight and proudly completed several marathons.

Well, what an example he came to be. Once in a while he’d encounter me socially and happily related his most recent running triumph, which might seem to pale in comparison to my history of running and winning races, but not really. His example changed my world in many respects, as I began to look at the running pack, and now the heavier riders in the peloton, with a lot more respect.

We all know corporate fitness programs target weight loss as a key to health, but perhaps, given some recent evidence that fat people might even outlive skinny people, it is time to look at the issue a different way.

Maybe love handles are one of the keys to life. Who knows?