Author: Cynical Woman

Well, it finally happened. Last week one of my best friends, Mary, showed up and whisked me away to Colonial Yorktown for a long bike ride. Yes, I finally got out of the neighborhood with my bike. We did 15 miles on the tour roads and through the historical area, and man! What a difference there is between riding on the open road versus riding through the neighborhood. I have a little problem keeping up with Mary on the hills, but then she was riding a road bike and I’m riding a cross bike, which is heavier and slower. It was most apparent on the way down a hill, because Mary would just fly down the hill while I still lagged behind even though I was pedaling like mad.

So I got my first taste of real freedom on the bike and I can’t wait to do it again. I’ve got an appointment to bring the bike in to the local shop for a tune up next week. After that, I need to get a flat tire kit. Then I should be good to go. I bought a bike rack for the back of the car a few weeks ago, so I can now get to the trails without having to risk my life biking on the local highways.

Beyond that, things are pretty much the same, which is good. I haven’t had any knee problems in weeks (YAY!), and while I’ve put on a few pounds, I have kept up with deep water aerobics and biking. I’m only getting to karate class once a week right now, due to my workload, but I’m still getting in and given my schedule I think that’s pretty good.

And that’s the report for this week! Going back to work now.

Well, this sucks. Last night my left shoulder sort of seized up with a pinched nerve and the damn thing has extended all the way into my neck. I took a double dose of Tylenol last night and slept with a heating pad, but am still having problems with it this morning. If this goes as per usual, I’ll be suffering with this for the rest of the week. Not fun.

These pinched nerves usually happen when I’ve got too much going on and I’m stressed out. I had thought I was finally getting the schedule under control and managing to scale things back, but we’ve been out and about quite a bit the last few weeks and then I felt like crud all last week. Now this week I’m facing an endless series of meetings, most of them related to Girl Scouts. I suppose it’s true what they say, no rest for the wicked.

So what to do? Baby my left shoulder, obviously, and continue taking over-the-counter pain medication. If I can scrounge up the money, I know a very good massage therapist I can call, too. If I can’t scrounge up the money… well, we’ll see.

I’m still going to deep water aerobics today, but will be using light weights and taking things slowly. And I’ll be doing lots and lots of stretching. We’ll see how I feel by the end of the day. Hopefully this works itself out quickly. Otherwise, I’m not going to be doing much moving for a while.

I do my darnedest to eat healthy when I can, but I will admit that when my schedule gets overwhelming (as it is wont to do all to frequently) I will go long stretches of time where I fall back on eating a lot of high fat comfort foods and junk. That happened a lot this year and I’m paying for it now as I search my closet for jeans that don’t cut off all my circulation when I try to put them on. I’m not doing too badly on the weight scale, but I could stand to get back to high fiber, low cal, veggie-focused meals again.

To that end, I picked up a cookbook a few weeks ago – Cooking Light: Fresh Food Superfast. Now, I am not the greatest cook in the world, but if you give me a decent recipe that doesn’t tax my tiny brain too much, I’ll do pretty good with it, and this appears to be the case with the Cooking Light cookbook. I made a soup and sandwich combo from it last week, garbanzo-carrot soup with feta-olive sandwiches, that turned out perfect. The recipe made enough to last me all week long. This morning I just made smokey shrimp gazpacho, and again the recipe came out great and again I have enough to last me the week. That’s the thing, I am frequently so crunched for time, I usually only get to cook once a week. So what I cook has to make enough for multiple servings and it has to taste good enough that I’ll be willing to eat it all week long. Cooking Light seems to have succeeded on both accounts with this book.

So I’m investing an hour or two every Monday morning now to make my lunch for the week. Hopefully, this will prevent me from reaching for the Doritos or Ramen noodles every time lunch comes around. I’ve also asked the Hubster to stock the fridge with more fruit. We are subscribed to the Harry & David “Fruit-of-the-Month” club, and this month we got a huge box of peaches and a huge box of nectarines. Our fruit for August was delayed by Hurricane Irene, thus the two boxes of fruity goodness arriving at once. The only problem with getting both boxes at the same time is that they both then have to be eaten within the week, so now I think it will be a while before I can get anyone in the family to even look at another peach or nectarine for a while. But Hubster did get me grapes, pears, oranges and strawberries, along with some salad greens and cherry tomatoes, so I now have enough raw fruits and salad stuff to easily add one more serving of fruits and veggies to every meal.

My weight is at the highest it’s been in years, despite all the bike riding and deep water aerobics, so I really do need to rethink my diet. I’ll let you know in the coming weeks how I do. I dropped about a pound last week then went to DC and indulged in a couple meals that weren’t as healthy as they should have been, so I’ll have to work that off again this week. But I’m hopeful that a combination of veggie-heavy meals and lots of exercise will put me back on the right track.

I realize I haven’t done a Move It Mama Monday post in a while, and I apologize. Life just keeps getting busier every time I turn around. Part of this busy-ness is actually fitness related, which makes my inability to blog about my workouts kind of ironic.

Anyway, I may have mentioned that I was given a bike earlier this summer. It’s a hybrid bike that belonged to Patricia, a friend of mine, and it was given to me in hopes that I would train up to ride in long touring rides, like those mega-huge charity bike rides you hear about from time to time. Well, I’ve been pedaling steadily since July and am up to riding 15-20 miles at a shot. That’s enough for me to consider entering a local touring ride this coming October, where the longer route is 22 miles. I think I should be able to do 22 miles without trouble. However, I need to get the bike into the shop first to have it checked over and get someone to make sure it’s fitted to me just right. I think the seat is a bit off, a little too far forward, and I can’t adjust it any farther back by myself. Plus the front wheel gears won’t switch up to the highest level, so that really needs to be looked at.

But I’m enjoying riding around my neighborhood. I’ve put in some extra miles this week and I can really feel it in my thighs. They ache just a bit, though not enough to leave me feeling crippled the way running was. Running is probably something I’m not going to be doing much of anymore, given the problems I had last spring. I tried to ease back into a regular running schedule after having been out a while, but it wasn’t working. I was having too many problems in my Achilles tendons and in my knees. With the bike riding, I don’t have those problems at all. In fact, since I started riding, I’ve discovered I can get up and down the stairs much easier than I’ve been able to in a couple years.

So, bike riding good! Bike riding very good! I’ll let you know if I sign up for that 22 mile ride, and I’ll see if I can’t get back into the swing of things here on the blog.