I am a machine!

Last Saturday, I rode my bike 35 miles. On purpose. The most I had ever ridden before was 20 miles, and that was with a 9 hour break between the first and second ten miles.

I hadn’t exercised in 2-3 weeks. I was feeling ashamed of myself. How best to counteract shame? Overdoing the very activity you’re ashamed about not doing, of course!

I had set out on my bicycle with the intention of only doing 6-10 miles. But the more I rode, the more I was annoyed with myself for being so lazy for so long. After my first 15 miles, I realized I was 10 miles away from a neighboring town. A destination, if you will. I had never biked there before. I thought, “I wonder if I can do it”. And do it, I did.

It was a beautiful ride through the woods. Dense forest encasing the paved trail. I saw two deer, one was about to cross the trail but got spooked back into the woods, the other was a little distance into the woods, munching away on greenery. I discovered bridges over rapids and rocky cliffs on this trail. Lots of friendly people, also out on a long bicycle adventure.

There were some non-paved trails along the way that I am going to have to explore sometime. By the time I came across them, my bottom was already getting sore from having ridden way more than I should have. I didn’t want to risk a rocky bouncy trail at that point.

Speaking of my bottom, it has now been 5 days since my bike ride, and it’s finally becoming less sore. Ouchie bottom!

But yeah, man. 35 miles nonstop. And I’ll do it again!

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 7th, 2008 at 06:20 pm and is filed under Health and Fitness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.