Day 72: Rant'n'ride

I took a "day of rest" yesterday. And by day of rest I mean, of course, day of chinese food, diet pepsi, twix & trashy reality television with your favorite russian and mine.

After last night's feast, I -not surprisingly - felt wretched this morning. Bloated. Full. Fat. Don't even get me started on where the needle was pointing when I stepped on the scale.

I spent the day feeling pretty down on myself and just generally bad about my body. When I returned home from work, Kate was super amped to go on a "fun" bike ride. Fun for her typically = torture for me, so I wasn't nearly as amped as she was.

The first quarter of our bike ride was about as fun as I felt. Wretched. We went down Old Westport and turned onto Fisher. By this point, my muscles felt really tired and lame. I complained a bit about my lack of fitness and she offered for us to turn back, but I didn't want to personally be as lame as my body, so I decided we should continue on.

During the first half of our ride down Fisher Rd, I lamented how frustrating it is that I have exercised every day for over 70 days and have felt no real results. How I go bike riding nearly every day and it still doesn't feel much easier. How I have varied my exercises and really pushed myself and still don't see any results in the way I look.

Of course, there is no chance that I am going to stop. Mostly because I don't want to regress. If I already feel this bad after actually doing the work, how did I survive before I got into this routine?

It just doesn't add up in my book. My diet has really improved since the summer started. I work out nearly every day (which is more than the recommended exercise plan). I lead a very active lifestyle. I'm always doing things and going places and not just sitting around watching tv with my hand in a bag of potato chips. I don't understand why my body isn't responding. And I know that I should not expect to see results immediately. But this has been going on for over 2 months already and I have seen literally NO results in the way I look. All of my clothes still fit me the same way. And that 20 pound weight loss goal is not even possible.

Kate and I bantered over what the reason for my fitness failure may be. She countered that maybe my body is at its natural weight. But I know it isn't. It was only 3 years ago that I weighed 30 pounds less than I do today. And even then, I could've lost more.

I entirely changed my whole lifestyle. I went from eating shit and not exercising at all to working out nearly every day and being more food-conscious. You would think such a drastic change in lifestyle would lead to at least some sort of encouraging change?

Anyway.

The rest of our bike ride was actually very pleasant and my spirits lifted quite a bit. I remember the first time I went down Fisher Rd, I had a bitch of time. I had an even bigger bitch of a time when I went down Chase Rd. I really thought I wasn't going to make it. But this was before I started doing any bike riding at all, so that's legit. We took a detour down Lucy Little and back to Old Westport and I was feeling pretty optimistic about the final stretch.

We ended up having to go up onto a sidewalk to avoid a car that was parked in the breakdown lane. Kate went past the flag for Thirsty Crow and I followed suit. And then had to stop. Yep. The Thirsty Crow "Open" flag somehow managed to wrap itself around my gear and I was, in fact, dragging it behind me. Wtf.

Kate came back and disentangled it and then my gears were kind of messed up. So she fixed them. (So handy, those Russians!) When we went past the flag, we were just about to take on the very large and tiring hill leading back up to UMD, but stopping right before it made the hill go by like a breeze.

By the time we finally returned to Aspen, I felt refreshed and not tired at all.

Total mileage: 12.6 mi

Conclusion: Bodies are weird, man.