First bike ride of 2011

<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Today was a gorgeous day in the Pacific Northwest. I pulled my bike out of the garage, dusted off the cobwebs, pumped up the flat back tire and went for my first bike ride of the year. It was sunny and 50 degrees. Gorgeous!</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I forgot how much I love riding my bike. It's hard to describe flying down a hill at 25 mph and feeling completely in control, yet free as a bird at the same time. I totally love it. Of course, going back up those hills with my extra twenty pounds was horrible. I thought I was going to have a heart attack for sure, as I was panting like a dog. It was really hard!</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I biked to the gym, worked out with weights, upper body for an hour and then biked home. It took me about 25 minutes each direction. Much slower than my old 20-minutes I was doing last summer.. In almost two hours I burned 699 calories (Polar heart rate monitor). </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Right now I'm totally and completely exhausted.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Watching the Grammys. Worst show ever! Right now I'm watching Cee-Lo Green in a goofy feather outfit singing the F--k You song (which I hate), but he's singing "Forget You" and he has some puppets and Gwynth Paltrow singing with him. Really? This is the best they could do? As soon as I finish this post the TV is going off. I'm reading a really good book, </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Minding-Frankie-Maeve-Binchy/dp/0307273563"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Minding Frankie</span></a><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> <span style="color: black;">by <span jquery1297663314429="119"><span class="contributorNameTrigger" jquery1297663314429="118">Maeve Binchy. Love this book.</span></span></span></span><br /><br /><u><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Plan for my week</span></u><br /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lots of exercise, as usual. Lots of stairs this week too, since the Big Climb is in less than five weeks (yikes!). </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">About my food, I'm going to stop freaking out about it so much. I'm really getting sick of being so worried about what I eat all the time. A piece of cake a couple times a year isn't going to kill me. Or even two pieces of cake a couple times a year. I just want to be healthy.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I eat very healthy about 95% of the time. That's about 90% more than I was doing three years ago. My biggest problem is that I eat too much of the good stuff. I rarely eat junk. I just need to eat less. Sounds easy. It's not.</span>

First bike ride of 2011

Today was a gorgeous day in the Pacific Northwest. I pulled my bike out of the garage, dusted off the cobwebs, pumped up the flat back tire ...

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