Have I Mentioned Lately That I Love My New Bike?

Or rather, after riding my new bike (flats and all), I so much prefer it to my other options.

Today there was a sidewalk chalk activity for kids downtown. Since we're less than two miles away, I thought I'd take the bike with the kid seat on the back.

Now, despite the multiple times I've ridden bikes not purchased specifically and/or sized specifically for me, I decided to take my husband's old bike because it's the only one with the kid seat and the kid seat is not easily transferrable to other bikes--in fact, it won't fit at all on mine.

I cleaned it off, put some air in the tires, and set off. My daughter was immediately having a blast. Me? Not so much. To say the bike doesn't fit me is an understatement. Also, the saddle is clearly not designed for women and/or the angle my body was at on the bike means it wasn't going to work for me regardless.

Ideally, when standing with feet flat and straddling the cross bar of the bike, you should be able to lift the bike so there is at least a little bit of what I refer to as "crotch clearance." This bike has zero for me. In other words, all my stops had better be planned and executed carefully so as to prevent some pretty personal bruising.

Ideally, when sitting on the bike and reaching feet for the ground, your toes should be able to touch on both sides. If the seat is too high, it needs to be adjusted down. Well, this seat is as low as it can go and I can reach the tips of my shoes, but not so much my actual toes. In other words, when carefully executing a planned stop, there will ideally be a curb to one side so I can reach, and if not, then preferably grass in case of impact.

Ideally, when pedaling a bicycle, the leg should nearly straighten at the bottom of the pedal cycle. Since this bike is too big for me and the seat is down low, my legs had an action similar to an adult pedaling a tricycle. Every time a leg came up, it hit me in the chest, which is actually quite an accomplishment considering it had to squish over my stomach to get there.

Add in that the handlebars were not close enough, I can't swing my leg over the seat because there's a kid seat on the back (which makes for some good entertainment watching me mount/dismount the bike), and I had a four-year-old sitting on the back laughing that she could hit my bottom, and it was not the most comfortable cycling arrangement.

But I was determined to get in some "moderate" exercise, so I rode downtown to the sidewalk chalk event, then we rode further to get lunch, and then I rode home. I was getting pretty tender in the hindquarters (due to the saddle, not any unplanned stops), yet for some dumb reason I asked my daughter if she wanted to go through the "jungle" on the way home (her term for the little tiny greenspace park in our neighborhood).

As I rattled and skidded over the gravel, I was able to set aside the "way to go, stupid, this bumpy gravel hurts more than the pavement" thoughts very quickly when I realized that although I was riding a mountain bike, I have very little experience on gravel, and on top of that, mountain bike or no, I don't think that activity is recommended when you have a child seat filled with 30 pounds of kid on the back.

Way to go, genius.

The only major mishap was when I went to pick up the bike after setting it down while I was talking to a neighbor. Instead of standing up like I expected, it skidded and the front chain ring slammed into my ankle bone.

I got home, pulled off my sweaty clothes, stuck my head in some cold water, and put a band-aid on my ankle.

The sad thing is, I actually had a lot of fun today and so did my daughter. But I really don't want to ride on that bike again, since I'm so spoiled with my new bike.

Sometimes I Fear . . .

. . . that my life is some kind of a hidden camera reality show for someone with a twisted sense of humor.

I'm still struggling with this lack of motivation issue. (Also, I'm still struggling with moderation, which will become clearer later on in today's tale.)

Since I had no daughter at home today, I thought it would be a brilliant idea to run the errands I had to take care of by bicycle. They were all little things and the distances didn't add up to much, so I thought it would be perfect: enough to get some exercise, but not enough to overdo it.

Yeah, yeah, I clearly don't know what constitutes "overdo" it when it comes to myself, stop laughing.

The Plan
Bike to the post office, where I would drop off a package and pick up mail for the preschool.
Bike to the preschool president's house, where I would drop off some of the mail.
Bike home.

Simple, right?

I even mapped out the route, using Google to include bike-friendly directions. Knowing I couldn't check my phone for every turn while riding the bike, I copied down the instructions on an index card, which I taped to my bike frame.

Before I go into the actual tale of my ride, I will say that by time I got home and was recounting all the things that went wrong, I realized it would be much faster to list the two things that went right:

1) I made it there.
2) I made it home, eventually.

What Happened Instead/What Went Wrong
1) It started raining
2) I couldn't figure out if the instructions were wrong or I missed a turn, but I got lost.
3) Apparently I am in worse shape than I realized as I was pretty tired when I got to where I was going.
4) Whether I missed a turn or not was irrelevant as on the way home it was clear that the Google instructions sent me through parks, down streets that didn't go through, and down imaginary streets.
5) I got a flat.
6) My CO2 cannister didn't fit my bike pump, so I got to manually fill my tire with my "backup" pump (which takes no less than 300 pumps to fill a single tire)
7) The tire went flat again.
8) It hurts to walk home the last 1/4 mile in my bike shoes.
9) I ended up with a migraine.

So the day started with me planning out this little "excursion" and thinking, "YAY ME!" because I was being active. Instead, by the end of the day, I end up thinking, "Way to go, dumbass," and wondering why it gets so hard to motivate myself to go out and do something active again.

Rough Race

My sister, in her enthusiasm for my continuing athletic participation (which often seems to exceed my own enthusiasm), called me prior to our trip to ask if I would like to participate in a 5K race for the Fourth of July. There was also a kids' 1-mile race, so she signed up the 4-year-old cousins as well.

My back has been gradually aggravating me more and more through this trip and I have to say I have NOT had the training time (or motivation) necessary to make any kind of improvement in this race over previous ones.

We had to drive a fair ways to get to the race, had challenges finding parking, and then had to walk quite a ways to get to the packet pickup area. My husband decides that he would like to run in the stroller dash, which started 15 minutes after my race, so he registered. We got everyone all organized, set out a space for ourselves on the sidewalk, and waiting for the race to start.

since it was already hot and I had no delusions about improvement, I started at a slow jog. Immediately my back started hurting and I figured I'd try to just work through it, hopefully loosening up as I went.

I think I made it maybe a mile before I had to walk. The hot knife pain in my lower back was severe enough I debated turning around and just going back, but forced myself to try and keep up a good walking pace.

Then the first stroller racer passed me. Granted, the guy was going fast, but I had a 15-minute head start and I hadn't even passed the halfway mark. Another stroller.

The third stroller to pass me was my husband.

Okay, so he's in WAY better shape and can run three miles in just over the time it takes me to run one mile.

Still. Depressing.

I continued to waddle along in my this-is-as-fast-as-I-can-go-shut-up-and-leave-me-alone-I-hurt walk. I haven't yet mentioned this, but immediately following the race, there was to be a huge parade on the same route. People were lining up in chairs and staking out space. No big deal, right? Lots of people there to encourage.

Wrong.

Since I was, again, one of the stragglers in the race, all the soon-to-be-parade-spectators were all over the race course. There were no officials or tape or signs or anything preventing them from blocking the road. I wasn't even one of the last people as there were a lot of walkers, but having to ask people to please move so I could finish my race and then being treated rudely like *I* was the one doing something wrong really ticked me off.

I was so sore by time I got to the finish that I was planning on just heading back to the car as I couldn't find my husband and daughter anyway. However, I really didn't want to miss her race, and I did get to cheer her across the finish line. It was awhile though before I saw her cousin come around. He's taller, has longer legs, and truly, is just simply faster than her, but apparently today he didn't feel like participating. My daughter was so proud that she beat him and kept repeating it to me.

I have to admit, that even though it was probably just because she was excited to run and he was too hot to care and just wanted to be somewhere else, I was proud of her and happy for her, although we had numerous chats about how it is not nice to keep telling your cousin you beat him. I reminded her that Auntie beat me significantly, so it balances out.

After the race, I went ahead and walked back to the car. I was not feeling well with the heat and I was pretty hungry. I had a snack and just as I was finishing, my husband called and asked if I wanted to go out to lunch with my sister and her family, so we went and grabbed some not-quite-Mexican food.

The plan was to go to this "great surf spot" and let my sister, her husband, and my husband go surfing. I was NOT looking forward to this. Between my back hurting, having sat on the beach and watched the kids for several days in a row and being out of reading materials again, I was actually rather annoyed.

We pull in to the state park, which actually had a long line stretching back down the highway with people waiting to get in. Once inside, we discovered they only take cash for parking, and we only had our debit cards on us, so I pulled out to leave. My sister, who'd driven in first, had left her cell phone in my car, so we couldn't reach her. My husband insisted that I wait for her and when she pulled up behind us, we hit a new plan.

I'd leave my husband and his surf gear with them and take my sleeping-in-the-back-seat daughter back to my sister's house--I had a key and a pass for the security gate, so I could get in.

My sister was SO WORRIED that I would be upset at not getting to stay at the beach. Here's where the disconnect comes in. I didn't want to go. I was tired of getting sun/windburnt, sitting in the heat, in pain, out of reading materials, and I was tired of all the sand in and on my car. After I assured everyone about twenty times that really, truly I was fine, I happily went back to my sister's house. My daughter even stayed asleep as I transferred her from the car to the bedroom.

When everyone got back several hours later, I had to again assure them that I was fine about coming back, actually I'd preferred it, they still couldn't seem to believe me. The guys got started on the barbeque and I began packing, which was actually quite an ordeal as 1) we'd bought a suitcase in San Diego and had to figure out how to cram that into the car and 2) my husband hadn't packed anything and I needed to load in his larger bags before I could start packing all of the small stuff in the car.

At 9:00, when I was running around in near panic because the car wasn't loaded and I was pretty much stuck on getting anything else done, they started teasing me, which didn't help my stress levels. I knew what had to be done, I knew I needed a good night's rest with a 16-17 hour drive for tomorrow, the rest factor was diminishing by the minute, and still hadn't eaten, nor was I watching the fireworks.

Tomorrow is going to be a long day no matter what.