Birthday Fitness
As you guys know, this last year has been up and down for me in the fitness department. I’ve been maintaining my current weight range to get other things squared away before focusing on the final stretch of weight loss. Here’s a quick history for anyone who stumbles across this post and wants to catch up.
We did it! The 25-mile loop is now behind us, and what a glorious ride it was.
Circumstances have been wrecking our training schedule, so we had to take the leap this morning. We hadn’t yet come close to our goal distance and we were running out of time: The Dehydrator is next Saturday. Rather than over-train trying to step up incrementally, we decided to just go out and see if we could do it.
As it turns out, we can.
I’ve learned a lot about myself on my many cycle rides over the past few years: how far I can push myself before my legs give out, how anger at the wind can drive me to overcome it, how much I value (and need) the serenity of a quiet morning with just the sound of bike tires and birds. I’ve also learned a lot about other people, though the teachings haven’t been nearly as positive (or as much fun for me.)
Welcome back to the Ride Report! We didn’t have one last week because I was working overtime and didn’t have enough cranial power left for blog posts, but we also didn’t ride last week due to said overtime and crazy weather. Our training was cut short this week as well; Brian’s bike had a mechanical issue and caused him a gnarly wreck on his way to work Tuesday morning. He was pretty banged up and needed some time to recover, but we did get in a good, challenging ride yesterday morning because he’s such a boss. Here are the ride details.
After last week’s post I made an executive decision to round up the ride reports and plop them into the Sunday verbings so my friends won’t disown me. We ride three days a week, so here are the reports from our most recent outings.
Last year Brian decided to ride in The Dehydrator, a multi-distance bicycle ride set up each July to benefit the local high school band. Being a former band nerd myself, I felt it’d be a fun thing to do together and signed up with him. We ended up having a great time, even though we had to go the shortest distance to accommodate my healing innards, and we knew we would participate again this year. We started our training a bit later than optimal this time due to my pants-wetting terror of being chased by large bitey dogs, but we’re making great progress.
Getting Organized
I love to organize things. Books, files, documents, rooms, you name it. I can track huge projects and barf out complete status reports within ten minutes of any request. So why does prioritizing my own personal crap make my brain feel like a pretzel? Specifically, I’m referring to exercising and writing, and how to cram them back into a fairly full schedule while still getting enough sleep to avoid becoming the epicenter of mayhem. This goal has proven difficult to hit, but I’m happy to say I’m making decent progress.
Featured Image: First Morning Glory of 2015, by Heather Lee
It’s time for a collection of updates that didn’t fit in elsewhere. What’s been going on?
I’ve been self-employed since May 2011, working mostly from our house. The first two years involved air travel and visits to new and exciting places like Wisconsin (sadly, Delaware hasn’t happened yet). The last two involved a flagging proposal environment and learning how to coupon effectively. Both phases of the business have been valuable experience that I wouldn’t trade for a fat 401(k), but now that I have said experience, trade it is exactly what I’m about to do.
After four years of doing my own thing, I’m putting Verb Forge on the back burner to accept a full-time position.