I Want to Ride My Bicycle, I Want to Ride My Bike

I love that song by Queen, Bicycle Race. I'm not one of those people who looks for deep meaning in song lyrics - I either like a song or I don't, hence my eclectic range of musical tastes - but I do like the actual lyrics in this song because to me it feels like it's just about enjoying life, not worrying about what's going on in the world, not caring if people disagree with you or judge you. It just about riding your frickin' bike. And that's what I finally did! Last week, I left work early, caught an early train and got my fat bottomed girl self on my bike and I rode like the wind. Note: the fat bottomed girl line is a reference to a lyric in the Queen song. I'm not being mean to myself but let's face it, this baby's got back, and back, and back (another song I love, ha!).

Fox River Trail before the trees bloomed and
I could still breathe through my nose.

Dam on the Fox River

So like I said, I finally (FINALLY!) took my beautiful bike out for a nice 6.5 mile ride. I'm so lucky to live where I live and have a gorgeous trail to ride on along the Fox River. I used to bike ride and run along Lake Michigan on the path in the Chicago when I lived there and the Fox River Trail makes me feel like I didn't have to give up something so wonderful when I moved out to the 'burbs. Plus there are much fewer people on this path and I'm not putting my life on the line to go out on trail like I did on the path in the city. I saw and heard of more accidents on that path than you'd believe so I'm grateful to have the Fox River Trail. Beautiful and safe!

The ride went great. It was tough at first because you use a totally different set of muscles for biking than you do for running. And while I was extolling the virtues of my ample behind in a previous blog with regards to it acting as a flotation device, thus helping me swim a little better, it's not such an asset on the bike. But it was still a great ride and it was wonderful to feel the breeze and to move quickly. When you are a slow runner, it's painfully obvious how slow you are and how each mile feels like twenty. But when you're biking, now, there's a different story! I wear my cell phone on an arm band and use the Runkeeper app to gauge my mileage for running and biking (and for safety reasons). It uses GPS and helpfully announces your distance every 5 minutes in a cool, semi-robotic female voice. When running, that robotic voice telling you that you've only gone 0.25 miles in 5 minutes can get, um, what's the word...irksome, to say the least. But on the bike, it ticks off the miles and is thrilling. I wish it also shouted out encouragement or had a mechanism that would yell obscure things at people as you pass them just to mess with them, but that's probably a different app (and I'm sure it exists, there's an app for everything...even an app to find obscure apps, I'm not kidding).

The bike ride for the Triathlon is 14.5 miles so I'm a little nervous about it, especially the fact that I have to run 4 miles after that but it was reassuring to be out there on the bike and to hit a good distance on the first time out.

In other happy news, I lost 3.5 pounds last week on Weight Watchers. I can't say enough about how great the program is, how user friendly (it has an app too!) and how much I love it. I'm not a spokesperson and am not getting paid to talk about it (I wish!). It's just an awesome program that really helps and if you need to lose any amount of weight I highly recommend it because it can fit into any lifestyle.

Lastly, on a personal, non-workout related note, one of my closest friends is getting married this weekend. We've known each other since we were babies, went to school and church together our whole lives, grew up down the street from each other, worked at the good old family Dairy Queen together and have stayed friends and Dinner Club mates our entire adulthood. She is like a little sister to me and I couldn't be happier for her and her darling husband-to-be. He is one lucky guy and I can't wait to earn Weight Watchers Activity Points dancing my fat bottom off at her wedding.

Much love and happiness to all of you, too, who are out there reading my blog. I'm flabbergasted that you like to read my ramblings and your sweet comments stay with me while I huff and puff my way along to June 12 and after. Count down to the Tri is 5 weeks! Send my running shoes strong thoughts please! xo