Saturday, June 8, 2013

June 8: Biking Bling


My day of no exercise yesterday left me with a night of no sleep.  Literally, I was wide awake until close to 3 am.  I even resorted to half of a sleeping pill:  no effect.  It seems I have to physically exhaust myself to be able to sleep for even a few hours.  What happened to Julie the professional sleeper? 

So today I went to the bike store and bought a bike helmet.  It was surprisingly fun.  Helmets these days are really cool looking, kinda like the fashion statement hats I saw worn by the stylish attendees at the Royal Wedding.  Plus, they fit so well!  Nothing like the last helmet I had (a decade ago) that was like a styrofoam globe wobbling all over my head and making me feel like an astronaut in Apollo 13. Ugh, maybe Apollo 11.

So I came home and helpful husband pumped up the bike tires of his hybrid bike, which I intend to ride in the race, and I set off with my GPS tracker and just tooled the neighborhood for 45 minutes.  And discovered, luckily, that “tooling” for me is more like becoming a machine with piston legs.  Thank you spinning training.  There will never again be any such thing for me as a la-de-da kinda bike ride.  I get on that thing and I want to hammer it.  My main fear is going super fast and hitting a bump or pothole and becoming airborne, so I tested that out with this bike and am happy to say that it’s heavy enough that I felt pretty securely tethered to earth even when going at jet speed.  I only rode 9.5 miles and had to stop at a bunch of stop lights, etc., but I could’ve easily done twice that distance, even with a bike seat that felt like a concrete slab. 

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