Biking Update - August 8, 2009

This post is a bit late, because I was out of the habit of the weekly biking updates. Last week was vacation, and I chose to include the weekly update in my "things to skip while away". But the accountability of this is very important to my weight-loss and fitness plan. It is easy to lie to yourself. It is hard to lie to a blog audience to whom you have to show your weight-loss graph every week.

It was a great week for biking, while down in New Jersey. I biked every day that we were not traveling (traveling days generally were impractical for biking, because of early wake-ups and early check-outs or late check-ins). I racked up 107.55 miles on the bicycle while we were away! (Plus, 43 miles on the boardwalk walked in Wildwood.) That was between 10 and 18 miles a day, every day. And it was worth it on multiple levels. First, the exploration was great - I saw a lot of wildlife (rabbits, terns, geese, herons, etc.), learned new things about places we had been visiting for years (Wildwood Crest has a wildlife preserve!), and felt the freedom of the road every day (stress melted away). Second, because I was burning so many extra calories while away, I saw very little jump in my weight, despite having pretty much whatever I wanted to eat. I started the vacation at 208 lbs, and ended it at 209.8 lbs. After french fries, motz sticks, and cheese steaks all week! I never did indulge in sugar, though, as it appears my body doesn't crave it the way it used to. I was going to have ice cream while on the boardwalk, but was never in the mood.

Of course, there were costs of going from 20 miles biked per week to 150 miles biked and walked. My knee has been very sore since I got back, and I have small blisters in a number of places on my feet. So, I have been taking it fairly easy on the exercise this week to let the body heal and my diet return to "normal." Because of that, I saw a slight bump up in weight over the course of this week, but it all came back down to lighter than when I left on Friday (207.2 lbs). I am still chasing the elusive 205 lbs, and we'll see how that works out in the coming months.

This next week should be interesting as I get back into the swing of exercising every day. Hoping to have a bike ride today with CRChair, and then ride to church tomorrow on my own. And who knows what the upcoming evenings will offer in terms of weather and conditions. But it was a wonderful vacation, and I feel truly ready to return to "normality", refreshed and raring to go. (Actually, went back to work last week to an incredibly tense week, but still feel refreshed even today.)