The Whole Way!

I’m trying to remember last summer…it was honestly a blur of chaos and wedding planning and details. I remember my brain feeling “full” all the time. Full of details, worries, excitement, planning…I was also going to the Warrior Room a lot. And cycling kind of took a back seat to everything else. My knees just weren’t ready for long rides and I don’t think I ever biked the entire commute. I *think* I stuck with the park and ride and biked from there. Honestly I didn’t mind. Like I said, my life was full and I just couldn’t add anything else. This summer? My hope was that I could go back to biking from home and doing it more than once a week.

I wasn’t sure if my healing back injury would let me but like I said in last week’s post, my body was feeling pretty good and I was feeling like biking from the park and ride wasn’t challenging enough. Due to a scheduling conflict with Michael (he needed the car on the day I wanted to ride) I decided to move up my timeline and bike from home a week earlier than I’d planned.

It was a little cool but the afternoon was supposed to be 90 degrees so I didn’t want to put on tights and a jacket. I wore my arm warmers and decided to wear my compression socks because they go to my knees. It was a better option than wearing heaving pants/jacket but it looked rather silly. Oh well.

It was a bit hard to bike from home but I was feeling okay. Fatigued, but okay. The minor hills got my heart racing and I was a little slower than I was in the past, but it was my first time.

I saw a deer on the Springwater trail! Unfortunately I was going too fast to stop in time and take a picture. Next time.

This time I biked on the new path (it was closed last summer) that went by the Opera House. The path is really nice!

I also got a close-up view of the new bridge. It it supposed to be open this Fall for walkers, bikers and the new Max line. I crossed the Hawthorne Bridge and made it to work.

Morning Stats:
Time: 52 minutes
Distance: 11.56
Calories Burned: 515

I like that burn! During my lunch break I went for a short walk (just under 2 miles). It was so nice outside but starting to get a little warm. Okay, now the food.

Breakfast: 2 fried eggs, a slice of Walnut Sourdough bread toasted with butter and apple cactus jam, unsweetened iced tea and coffee with creamer when I got to work. Calories: 394

Snack: My new favorite snack. Cottage cheese and blueberries. Calories: 118

Lunch: Lean Cuisine (chicken with rice, veggies and almonds) and some yogurt covered pretzels. Calories: 385

Snack: Baby carrots and sugar snap peas with Laughing Cow cheese and a 90 calorie fruit bar from Trader Joe’s. Calories: 172

Afternoon Ride

Michael gave me the option to ride part way and hitch a ride home with him if I didn’t feel up to biking home the whole way. I was slightly tempted, but I really wanted to try biking the whole way home.

It went really well and wasn’t too uncomfortably hot. I was pretty close to home when I got stopped by this:

Yep, train. And it was about a 5 minute wait for it to go by. At least it was in the shade. I should have taken the shortcut that goes around the train intersection…next time.

Despite the train, it didn’t take me that long to get home, even though I felt like I was really slow and I took a lot of water breaks.

Afternoon Stats:
Time: 51 minutes
Distance: 11.18
Total Distance: 22.74 
Calories Burned: 509

I was STARVING when I got home. I had some tortilla chips while I made dinner (seriously wanted to eat everything in sight). Dinner was a big salad with green leaf lettuce, spinach, avocado, orange and yellow peppers, carrots, sunflower seeds, feta cheese, blueberries, 4 ounces baked chicken and vinaigrette dressing. Calories: 671

It was a really filling dinner and good for a hot day. Dessert was some vanilla ice cream topped with fresh blackberries picked from my yard.