Bike2K

This week I hit 2,000 miles of cycling on the year. No small feat, but also proof that slow an' steady might just win the race. Yep, it's a lot of miles, but they've been racked up over 10+ months, not in a I'm gonna go out and ride 70 miles today! kind of way, but more in the I gotta get my tired ass to work way. Repetition and necessity and the identification of this exercise as something I need for mental health have all come together to give me this thing that seems to keep me healthy. If you'd have told me 5 years ago that this would be a way of life for me, I might have shook my head, or shrugged, or even fantasized that it could be so. Change comes slow, in repeated doings, in pondering and questioning and pushing a teensy bit further when we find that little bit extra within ourselves. It also comes in laying low, resting, and building the strength to continue this growth with respect for the limitations of the body. What a surprise that I've gone to "eleven."

oh the woes of winter-- er, Fall-- er, Winter

Last week I turned into kind of a sugar/wheat junkie. It made me itchy in the worst kind of way, so now I'm coming off the sugar thing, which means walking by that rack of freshly baked cookies repeatedly and feeling a little drool start, but not reaching my hand out to grab one. Instead, I shall indulge in Asian Pears.

This is the time of year when my body says

hey
whoa
there, there
isn't it time to take a break?

And it wants to slow down and get a little padding on and just lay low. To top it off, I'm pretty exhausted from my unsummer spent working 6 days a week (at least 8 hours a day). So this is the part in the movie where our heroine, battered and bruised, faces yet another big bad obstacle, and it's not clear if she's gonna beat this one, but she's gotta dig deep, as it were, into the reserves (or whatever tried and true cliche works for you) and pull out that last can of whoopass, 2007 .

(rummaging. fumbling. checking pockets)