Six miles!!

I did NOT want to take a bike ride this morning. I stayed up really late last night, didn't sleep well and then I had really weird, long, crazy dream that really stuck with me when I woke up. I couldn't shake it and it just got my morning off to a weird start. It's cloudy outside, my muscles hurt...I thought of a million reasons why today would be the perfect day to skip my bike ride.

But I dragged myself out there for two reasons. First, because I know myself and as soon as I start finding reasons to take a day off, one day will become two and then three and then five and then you'll never hear about me riding my bike again and I'll slip back into last years fiasco and I don't want that. Second, I'm calorie counting on my diet and I can eat more when I exercise. :) It's super awesome to burn off a few hundred calories first thing in the morning and then watch my daily available calories go up. It makes dieting WAY easier.

So I went. I started slow, kind of in a bad mood and stuck in my head. The dream I had last night was still bugging me and I analyzed it as I rode, which is pointless but sometimes I do it anyway.

I got to the park, unmotivated and going through the motions. I made it two and a half miles and took my normal park bench stop to drink water and catch my breath. I sat there for a minute and tried to force myself to think positive thoughts and be in a better mood and then I decided to screw the positive affirmations and just be mad for a while, lol.

I have an iPod playlist that I use when I ride my bike that is mostly full of upbeat, happy, motivational songs. While I was sitting on the park bench I decided to switch it to some mad music. I have a small collection of mad songs. Is that weird? :)

And so I started the second half of my ride. Just me and my mad music. And then I got mad. I rode fast and in my mind I imagined riding over all the hurdles in my life. I rode over a few people in my life who have really hurt me and let me down. I rode over anxiety, I rode over depression and I rode over the number on the scale this morning. I rode over sore muscles and weird dreams and cloudy skies. I made it another lap, and usually that's when I exit the park and head home and as I got close to the exit I decided that I had one more lap in me. I NEVER have one more lap in me. Every day I do three laps and I'm counting the seconds until I hit the exit and can head home. But today I was mad enough that I needed one more lap. I still had some imaginary hurdles to drive over.

So I rode. I rode one more lap and hit five miles just as I got to the exit of the park. I knew that that point that I was going to be close to six miles if I went home right then, but it's not quite a mile to the park from my house. I decided that if I was going to get that close to six miles I was going to make it all the way so I took the long way home, making a loop around a back road that I don't normally ride to insure that I'd get the full six miles.

I pulled in to my driveway at 6.13 miles. A new record. And you know what? I was so freakin' proud of myself that I stopped being mad. I rode six miles today! SIX!! When I started riding my bike last month I couldn't even go ONE without feeling like it was going to kill me. Six miles is still not that far on a bike, and I still can't ride fast and I still look stupid in my spandex pants, but I rode six miles today, on a day when I didn't really even want to get out of bed, and that made me feel like a rockstar. What I learned today was that sometimes to accomplish something, you just have to get a little mad. :)