Heft on Wheels: A Field Guide to Doing a 180 [Paperback]

Take one very large guy. Add booze, cigarettes, and an extreme amount of junk food. Mix in a wry, self-effacing wit. Throw in a bike. The result? Heft on Wheels, a potently funny look at turning your life around, one insanely unrealistic goal at a time.

Not that long ago, Mike Magnuson was a self-described lummox with a bicycle. In the space of three months, he lost seventy-five pounds, quit smoking, stopped drinking, and morphed from the big guy at the back of the pack into a lean, mean cycling machine. Today, Mike is a 175-pound athlete competing in some of the most difficult one-day racing events in America. This irreverent and inspiring memoir charts every hilarious detail of his transformation, from the horrors of skin-tight XXL biking shorts to the miseries of nicotine withdrawal.

Heft on Wheels is an unforgettable book about getting from one place to another, in more ways than one.“Mike's one of the only writers in the world who makes reading about cycling so much fun you're nearly tempted to skip your next ride and keep turning the pages.” —Bill Strickland, executive editor, Bicycling magazine

“Forget Dr. Phil and the South Beach Diet. Forget Atkins and scary pills. Mike Magnuson found another, much more enjoyable way to shed pounds and get healthy: cycling.” —Chicago Sun-TimesMike Magnuson teaches creative writing at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale and has written for Esquire, GQ, and Bicycling. He is the author of two novels and a memoir.A truck will hit me.

I'm forty years old, the age of doom coming on and regret setting in, et cetera, but hey, I'm not caught up in all that. I'm happy. I'm not overweight anymore. I don't drink anymore or smoke anymore, and, imagine this, I'm not depressed anymore.l³!