Beautiful May

May has come and gone... Its actually flown by!!

I had set some pretty hefty goals for May:

•  75 miles per week;
• 300 miles for the month;
• longest ride to date of at least 40 miles; and 
• bike in 2 new states!

I worked hard this month and I'm proud to say I get a check mark for each goal!! I was able to really push myself and make sure I got at least 75 miles each week, which got me to the 300 mile mark today!

I biked everywhere. I went to biking events and meetup groups. I even got some friends to start biking.

Two weekends ago we were staying in Holland, MI for a kite festival in Grand Haven (I highly recommend the kite festival!). I rode 40 miles around the area in 2 days. Holland and the surrounding area was very bike friendly!

Last weekend I was camping in Ohio for Memorial Day. I was able to find a wonderful trail in the country that a friend and I rode 42 miles on from Nelsonville to Athens. It seems like Ohio has some really nice trails!

People often ask me, how do you find all these bike trails?? Its a simple answer: google (https://maps.google.com/). This allows you to input directions via car, bus, bike or by foot. You can generally search your city by inputting a starting location and adding another city or landmark in the destination; this doesn't have to be perfect because once you hit the bike routing option you'll see a lot of green lines on the map. These are bike trails/routes: the solid dark lines are bike trails, the lighter green lines are bike trails on roads and the dashed green lines are bike friendly roads. Hopefully you can discover some new routes you didn't know existed!

2 month update!

So yesterday was my 2 month anniversary of getting on a bike.. I thought I'd share a little update on my progress:

• biked 472 miles in 2 months
• burned over 40,000 calories
• lost 22 pounds
• and feel a whole lot better!  

Sweet Sweet Rewards

The sweetest of rewards is not a candy bar or fried food.. Today my sweet reward was being able to  comfortably slide on pants that I haven't worn in a year. I honestly can't remember the last time I worn any of them- sad, but true..

I organized my closet today and found 6 pairs of dress pants buried at the bottom of my closet..  I decided to try each one one. I paused for a moment, I had a bit of anxiety- what if I was disappointed? what if each pair was just as tight and uncomfortable as I remember them being? I was surprised as I slipped each one on and found that 4 pairs fit VERY COMFORTABLY/would be too big in a few weeks... I also found that 1 pair was too big and 1 pair was just a bit snug. And that was GREAT for me!! I even became excited to plan my wardrobe for the week!

After the dress pants, I moved on to shorts. I hadn't worn any of them for over 6 months.. With anticipation I tried each one on... and each one fit COMFORTABLY!! They weren't snug, I didn't feel uncomfortable, there was no thinking "oh maybe they'll stretch out throughout the day". You all know what I'm talking about~! I even found a pair of jeans that I had forgotten about and they fit perfect!

These feelings were some of the sweetest rewards possible. Its also inspiration to continue on my journey with my head held high!

Keep moving!

Goodbye April, Hellloooo MAY!

April has come and gone- that means its time to evaluate your past activity and set future goals! I like to keep track of my mileage on mapmyride.com, but I also keep a calendar on a dry erase board that I see everyday. My dry erase board happens to be in my laundry room.

I love the dry erase board for a couple of reasons- I love chalking up my mileage after each ride, while I'm folding laundry I can contemplate my progress and plan this weeks rides, its an easy way to keep track of weekly and monthly mileage and goals and it holds me accountable! You can find a free calendar here: http://www.printfree.com/Calendars.htm

My April goal was 50 miles per week and I blew that out of the water with 61.5 miles the first week, 63.75 miles the second week, 65.5 miles the third week, but took a nose dive on the fourth week due to pneumonia. I did manage 36 miles in the last 2 days of April- for a grand total of 277.75 miles, longest ride being 20 miles- THAT feels pretty darn good :) :) :)

Now to decide on May goals- you always need a goal! My May goals are:

• 75 miles per week;
• 300 miles for the month;
• longest ride to date of at least 40 miles; and 
• bike in 2 new states!

Happy May ya'll!!

Spring Swing

Spring is in full swing! It was a glorious day today and I got to ride with my best friend! He coincidentally got me interested in biking for weight loss and he rides a road bike- FAST. Due to the construction on the Monon, we decided to try the Fall Creek Trail which had been flooded for about 2 weeks prior. But since we've had some dry days, Fall Creek was the perfect trail for today.

If you've never ridden the Fall Creek, its really nice for a couple of reasons: the pavement is a bit rougher than other trails which provides good resistance, the curves in the path and the scenery make it much more interesting and you can ride virtually non-stop. These factors make this trail ideal for getting a workout. I also personally love this trail because I can leave from my house and its a 16 mile roundtrip ride- an added bonus :)

I'd previously only ridden this trail to where it ends at the Skiles Park parking lot . I'd knew there were other mountain bike trails within the Skiles Park, but I'd never checked it out. Today was the day and my friend pushed me all the way to the top... Just beyond the the Skiles Park parking lot is a rough paved trail that goes for about 3/4ths of a mile and dead ends at 65th Street. The trail leads up a hill with a moderate incline which leveled out more towards the top. Once you get to the top, its a nice flat ride on the hilltop to the end of the trail. Going through the park was a great little push for me and also extended my ride to 17.5 miles :) And we made roundtrip in 1 hour 17 minutes! A new time and speed (13.6 mph) record for me! What a day!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skiles_Test_Nature_Park
http://cees.cs.iupui.edu/Service_Learning/All_Projects/Skiles_Test.htm

Group Rides

So Friday I took my first group ride with Meetup.com members... I was looking to make 'biking' friends and get more adventurous/change my rides up a bit... I have to say it was pretty cool! And everyone was nice :) We rode 10 miles at Eagle Creek State Park in just over an hour, a pretty easy pace... which was good because I was just getting back into the swing of things after my bout with pneumonia.

This was my first non-trail ride too.. It took a little bit to get accustomed to riding in a group: learning the new edicts of verbal and hand motions, where to physically be in the group, who knew each other and such.. I wasn't mentally prepared to see such big hills (I'm sure the hills were actually small, but looked giagantic from a bike's perspective). Since I'd only ridden on trails, hills were something new to me.. But like any other challenge, the task (or hills in this case) can seem somewhat daunting. But once I rode up them I got a great sense of accomplishment!!


I took Saturday off to help my wife with some outdoor stuff.. Scraping paint off the front porch gave me a workout... Sunday was rainy, so I stayed inside and a made curtains (something I'd been waiting to check off my 'to-do' list for 6 months!)..

Since I haven't ridden very much in the past week, I'm starting to feel like a sack of potatoes.. The weather has a great forecast for the beginning of the week, so I'm looking forward to getting back into the saddle!