Originally Posted by insignia100

Oh dear. Well, to put it bluntly I've gain a lot of weight in the past 6 months. It all started in TN when my wife was let go from her job. We are both veterinarians, and since I wasn't happy at my place of employment, we decided that it was time we purchased our own practice. After several months and LOTS of stress eating, we purchased a clinic in NC. Three months in and things with the clinic are going GREAT. My weight, though? Not so much.

In June I was down to 243 lbs. Today, I'm right at 280 lbs. Yikes!

Now that our stress levels are starting to come down, I've gotta get back on the bandwagon. Much of my weight loss was accomplished riding my recumbent trike when I lived in Tucson (oh, how I miss The Loop...), and once I got down to 250 lbs I got a Giant Defy Composite road bike. I promptly upgraded the wheels and started riding my butt off. It may not seem like much, but I worked up to my longest ride of 26 miles before the stress really hit and my exercise dropped off and my eating skyrocketed.

So here's my dilemma. I want to get back on the bike, but I'm a bit wary about riding a CF bike at my weight. I felt like I was on the upper end of weight suitable for CF road bikes when I was under 250 lbs. And, of course, all these reports of CF frames self-destructing are maybe psyching me out a bit. I'm far from a high performance rider (average ~13 mph) and learned to be light in the saddle, so logic tells me I'd be fine. Obviously, I wish I could magically be back in the sub-250lbs range and not worry about it.

What say you? Say screw it and ride? (That's why my heart is telling me...)