day 24: almost done! plus motivation/ing

this morning was the LAST MORNING of the commuter challenge. thank. jesus. we are TIRED, friends. t.i.r.e.d.d.d.d.d. addicted to commuting by bike, yes, but not every day. every day is hard when it takes two hours and ten minutes out of your day, not to mention waking up at 5:15 every day and having to go to bed at ten, which you never do and so you're extra tired, plus all of this is on top of running which, let's face it, is absolutely brutal after a bike ride....but it's been an AMAZING week. i'm so, so glad we did this! a billionth shout out to miranda for doing this with me. and for committing to about three times a week for the rest of the summer. whoo!!

to celebrate, we got breakfast at mickey's this morning. YUM. as yelp mentioned, the servers are grumpy. and old. but the food was deliciously fatty and reasonably priced. i can't post the picture of me on here because i have DIRT ALL OVER MY FACE (it rained really, really hard this morning and my teeth are STILL chattering, four hours later), but that doesn't mean i can't post one of her...

my trusty bike-panion

just in case i forget mid-summer, here are the things i love about biking to work:

• feeling a sense of accomplishment when i finally reach the front door of my office 
• spending two hours a day outside
• riding over the river in various places and marveling at its beauty
• getting to know friedrich and all of his quirks
• finding kinship with the other bikers who are out
• knowing that by the time i'm sipping my morning coffee, i've burned 500 calories
• challenging my body on hills and unfamiliar paths with something i'm not great at yet, but will be
• racing to keep up with miranda, who is in about the same shape i'm in, but is way, way better at bikes (srsly, watch that girl go up a hill)
• listening to podcasts in the morning and associating places in my path to places in stories i hear

sigh. i'm the sappiest. oh, also, my mood has been incredible this week, probably because i'm getting ridiculous endorphins. also, apparently heart rate zones have different emotional effects in addition to those fat burning things i wrote about yesterday. whoo! i'll write about those sometime, maybe...

ALSO a few of you have told me that this blog is inspiring you to change things about your lifestyle. i can't tell you how humbling that is and how incredibly happy it makes me. you guys are SO motivating and your remarks about my blog and responses to my posts are incredibly wonderful.

now. the only thing i want to ask in addition is that you comment! i'd love to see what you guys are thinking, if you have questions about any of the stuff i'm doing, want to tell me that i look like i've gained weight in the last few weeks etc...kidding. or am i?

all i have to say to you is "love" and thank you for being such wonderful friends/family.


okay, back to that blog thing.

now that i have a heart rate monitor that's up and running, i'm going to attempt to calculate calories using my heart rate and estimated vo2 max, which is somewhere around 48 (yes, you can just go ahead and wikipedia that). also, i got a body fat percentage estimator with my HRM, but those numbers will not see the light of day until they're reasonable. (ugh.)

here's a thing: biking actually has me within the fat burning range of heart rates. so, by the end of the day, i will have spent over 10 hours burning mostly fat. awesome.

now, for initial food and exercise stats.

food
2 eggs (fried in butter? yum): 180c, 12p, 0f
2 pieces buttered wheat toast: 201c, 4.5p, 2.5f
3 strips bacon: 138c, 9.5p, 0f
1c hashbrowns: 410c, 4.5p, 5f

totals so far: 929c, 30.5p, 7.5f

bam.

exercise
estimating about an hour and five minutes, average heart rate of 144 (i'm dumb and accidentally deleted stats before i double-checked...grr) biking: 580c, which is higher than i've been estimating so far. i've checked around a little bit, done some re-calculating and i think that's accurate, but i guess we'll find out when i gain hundreds of pounds instead of losing weight.

net so far: 349c

whoo! it's not negative! how amazing is that.