Sometimes, you need to break your own rules

I woke up & spent an hour incessantly & relentlessly pounding. I'm sweaty, out of breath, & have a silly smile on my face.

-my incredibly clever & uproariously hilarious double-endentre tweet from this morning

This morning was type the morning that a cyclist dreams of. Temperature just on the "warm" side of cool with a tiny breeze. Not a cloud in the sky.

It had rained, heavily, the night before, so the humidity was barely registering. Yet, there was the feel of water in the air, as last night's rainfall evaporated. In all honesty, it felt like I was at the shore . . . now if only I were cycling to the beach, instead of the office.

I started the trip as I normally did - taking it easy. But, the day was just too precious. Days like this, where the weather smiles upon you & I find myself on the road, are few & far between (with a newborn on the way, they may go into hiding for the season). I broke one of my cardinal rules.

When I started biking, I didn't have many rules - but the one I've stuck by was that I would never push myself on the way into work. I didn't want to pull into the office all sweaty & tired. I'm already burning a boatload of calories, so as long as I'm not running late, why would I? Well, days like today are why. I pushed myself. From the first hill, up through the driveway to the corporate parking lot. And the cycling gods smiled on me, too - there's one typically busy left-hand turn I need to make. Yet there were no cars in sight. There are 7 traffic lights I need to ride through, yet only one was red, and I only had to stop for a minute or so.

The typical ride into my office takes me between 1:15 and 1:25 on the Bianchi outfitted with the XTracycle (steel frame + a 12 pound add-on that changes the aerodynamics of the bike so as to allow you to carry more). My fastest ride ever was 59:29, on the Giant (aluminum frame, weighs 8 pounds less than the Bianchi did before I had it altered), without any gear. Today, I completed the ride in 58:00, despite a fully-loaded bike (change of clothing, lunch (carrot sticks, beet salad, guacamole), and my work laptop). I'm not tired - I'm feel freaking amazing.

On top of everything, despite my absolute "avoid the scale" fanaticism I have with my general well-being, I can't help but notice results. I'm going to save most of it for another blog post, but it's kind of awesome to actually see that my body is changing for the better.

For food today, we have grapefruit, cherries, beet salad, carrot sticks, hummus, guacamole . . . and as it's Friday, I just about have to eat all of it. Mmmmm, yay!