Stupid Utah Weather

Stupid Utah weather!!! Last week I couldn't ride my bike at all 'cause I was sick. I couldn't ride my bike at all the week before that because it was in the shop getting a tune up. Now this week, I can't ride my bike at all, except for one, maybe two days (Monday and Friday) because of the stupid Utah weather. It's the last day of March and it's SNOWING!!! What the crap? Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not frustrated because I didn't expect it, 'cause hello, I'm in Utah, I expect it, I just think it's dumb! I just think it's retarded and I hate how we go from one extreme to the other in regards to weather this time of year in Utah.

I can't wait until we have decent weather for a couple of weeks without stopping so I can take advantage of working out outside.

Sugar Free Peeps

I was walking down the aisle at Wal-Mart the other day and what did my eyes happen to see? Sugar Free Peeps!!! I was kind of excited! Now granted, I'm not a huge peeps fan, but it made me excited for others that are. You get 3 large peeps in a container and the whole container is only 60 calories!!! Even non-sugar free peeps don't have too many calories in them. I believe a package that has 5 or 6 peeps in it only has like 140 calories in it. :)

It's Easter time and I haven't had a peep in many a years, so of course, I bought a package. I had one peep and gave the rest to my dad. I am all peeped out! Lol. I'm not a huge fan of peeps, but it's nice to know that there are options out there.

Sick = No Exercise

I felt a cold coming on this last Tuesday and I was really hoping that it was just allergies, but come Wednesday morning, it was a full blown cold. :( As I said in a previous post, I've looked on the internet and found that it is not a good idea to exercise when you're sick. I've been going through withdrawls because I want to exercise SO bad!!!

I've gone to the store and bought Zicam, which is supposed to help your cold go away faster. It's helped a little bit, but as of today, I don't have a stuffy nose, but I seem to have a cough; therefore I am going to be taking cough medicine every 3 hours and hope it helps.

This just makes me nervous because I basically haven't exercised for about 2 1/2 weeks now and I've got my first triathlon in less than a month! Eeeekkk!!!

4.0 Miles

I've reached a milestone in my jogging. For the longest time it took me a while to get to the point where I could jog 3.2 miles without stopping to walk. Then the Christmas season came and work got super busy and I didn't get to workout much, so I had to work myself back up to jogging 3.2 miles without stopping.

Well, tonight, after not working out for almost a week (I was on vacation and I wasn't feeling well), I was able to jog 4.0 miles without stopping to walk! Woohoo!!!

This makes me doubly excited because now I'm going to do my first 10k (6.4 miles) this summer. My company is creating a jogging/running group and I'm going to join it and do a race with them. I have the option of either doing a 10k or doing a 1/2 marathon (13.1 miles). I'd really like to do the 1/2 marathon, but I don't know if that would be overshooting it and I don't know if I'm ready to do the 1/2 marathon, so I will be happy with doing a 10k. Yay!

I Miss My Bike

I miss my bike. :( Lately, when we've had good weather, I've been riding my bike home from work (11.0 miles). With my upcoming triathlons, I decided that before I do much more riding, I better get my bike in for a tune up. I called the bike shop on Saturday to see if I needed an appointment to bring it in and they said no that I could just bring it in and it's on a first come first serve basis and that they are a couple of days out. I thought, ok, no biggie, a couple of days, I'll still be able to ride my bike home on maybe Thursday and Friday. So, I took my bike in and they said it wouldn't be ready until Friday!!!! Eeeek!!!!!!!!! I miss my bike. However, I'm excited that it's in for a tune-up because I'm having them put Mr. Tuffies in the tires so that it's harder to get a flat tire. :)

Transportation to & from work

Today the forecast was to have really good spring weather. :) I was SO excited that I decided I was going to ride my bike home from work (11.0 miles). I took the train in to Salt Lake and then rode the couple of blocks from the train to work.

Because I have windows right in front of my desk, the blinds are usually closed because the sun shines right on my computer and it puts a horrible glare, etc., so I hadn't been keeping tabs on what the weather was like outside. The further in to the afternoon it got, we were able to open the blinds and it looked a little over cast outside, but that didn't bother me. I was still quite excited to be riding my bike home. I thought that if it was overcast, it would at least mean a cooler ride home. Right before I left work, I noticed that the wind was blowing pretty hard and that made me a little concerned. I mean, obviously, riding your bike in to the wind isn't easy.

I easily could've called home and had someone come in and pick me up, but I was determined to ride my bike home.

Now, just a little side note, last year, during the summer I decided to ride my bike home from work. Now, this was not too long after I'd gotten my bike. But I thought I'd be able to do it. It was one of the hardest bike ride's I had been on in my life. It took me like 2 hours to get home. I think I had picked the hottest day of the year to ride my bike, which didn't help. Plus, since my bike was pretty new, I wasn't used to the gears. I knew how to shift in to an easier gear, but I didn't know how to get back to a harder gear. Obviously, since then I've learned. Haha.

But, today, when I rode my bike home, I was able to make it home in a little less than 1 hour. As soon as I stepped outside of work, I wasn't sure if I would need to wear my sweatshirt for the ride or not, so I decided to go ahead and wear it. If all else failed, I could stop and take it off...which I ended up doing. :) The wind was actually nice, because it cooled me down and at points, I think it helped me, 'cause it would push me. But, I had no problems going up the hills or anything.

The only thing that concerns me when riding my bike home, is there are parts of ride that there is no bike lane on the highway, so I'm riding with regular traffic, and regular traffic doesn't pay enough attention to the cyclists. It scares me. Plus, it's a very gravely ride. With how small of tires that are on racing bikes, one little rock or pebble and you're done for. It just makes me nervous. Otherwise, it was awesome.

I only ran in to one trouble on the way home, and I came upon a red light and right there at the corner was an Atlantis Burger restaurant. It smelled soooooooooooooo good! Haha. Otherwise, I had no trouble at all.

Once Daylight Savings Time hits (3/14/10), as long as it's good weather, that is now going to be my transportation home from work. I just wish I kind of lived a little further away so that I could ride longer. I'll just have to ride past my house and then double back so that I can get in more miles. :) I LOVE riding a bike.

Let Them Eat Cake

Over the past year since I've started my weight loss journey, I've gotten pretty good at not eating stuff that isn't good for you. However, I still have a craving once in a while, and that's why I give myself one day a week (Saturday) to cheat and eat some unhealthy stuff.

One thing that I crave once in a while is cake with buttercream icing. It is my absolute FAVORITE!!! I just love the taste of it.

Well, this last week at work, it was my co-worker's 10th anniversary, so the company bought her this HUGE sheet cake to share with the department. It was a white sheet cake with strawberry filling and it had white buttercream icing with purple and pink roses.

Normally I would have no problem passing up a piece of cake, or if I chose to have a piece of cake, it would be basically a single bite of the cake, but I was craving the cake. It just looked and smelled sooooo good, but I knew I couldn't have a piece and I wanted a piece really really bad. It made it extra hard to pass up a piece of this cake because the past 2 weeks I hadn't lost any weight, no matter how hard I worked out (see blog post about muscle gain). To top it all off, the cake was sitting on the table literally right next to my desk.

I basically had a melt down at work over a piece of cake. Plus, it didn't help that the next day at work, my department was having a celebration with banana splits because we'd had a rough couple of weeks because we had to cut bonus checks for the entire company and it didn't go very smooth.

I called my dad and spoke with him and basically had a HUGE meltdown at work over a piece of cake, banana splits, and all the goodies we had at work that week that I couldn't have. It didn't help that my co-workers were like "Have an apple (banana, piece of fruit, etc.)". I felt they were comparing having a piece of fruit to having a piece of cake or ice cream. Now don't get me wrong, like I said a post or two ago, I LOVE fruit, but it's not the same as having cake or ice cream. C'mon people...seriously.

Well, come Saturday, my cheat day, I decided to go up to the bakery at the store and buy myself a piece of cake. They usually have chocolate cake, white cake, and german chocolate cake that you can buy just a slice of, but this last Saturday all they had was mint chocolate (not a fan), german chocolate (not a fan) and cookies n cream cake. So, I bought myself a slice of cookies 'n cream cake and went home to eat it.

I got about 1/4 of the way through the piece of cake and it was SO sweet and SO rich, that it made me sick. :( I was so disappointed that the piece of cake made me sick. I think my body has not been used to that much sweet and richness that I tried to eat this big piece of cake that it made me sick.

I don't think I'm going to want a piece of cake for a while.