Longest bike ride in years. Simsbury, Connecticut to Rt 57 in Massachusetts

On Monday, my company’s Biggest Winner contest kicked off. What this means is six weeks of tracking everything I eat and every bit of exercise. I’m on a team with three gals that I haven’t met, so I’m really in this myself. As I said previously, I am now weighing myself daily, tracking weight, body fat and so on. The results have been interesting but not overly so in the past 16 days. I have peaks of weight, swinging by as much as 5 pounds from my low, but mostly staying within a pound or two daily. My goal for this year’s Biggest Winner contest is to drop my body fat percentage down from the current high 20’s to at least the mid 20‘s. BMI will, of course, follow the downward movement.

As far as activity goes, I have been doing nothing but shoveling and spinning. Lots of shoveling and twice a week spinning. Today’s spinning was one of my favorites classes, and the second time we did a 10 lap repeat. 90 seconds of position 1 to 2 jumps, 30 seconds of speed work, followed by 90 seconds of a hard hill climb in position 3. Repeat for a total of 10 laps. It is both fun and totally exhausting. At the end, my legs were spent.

This weekend, I am also purchasing bike shoes that clip into the pedals of the spin bikes. This is not a significant cash outlay, but from what everyone has told me, will be well worth the efficiency increases and decreased knee pressure during the intense spin classes. This means that I will also need to change out the pedals on my actual bike, but will wait to do that until after the weather warms up and I get out there riding for real.

So with the huge snow piles on every corner and the melting snow on every trail, you’ll find me inside at one of my two gyms somewhere between the cycling studio and the row of treadmills.