I went on a 9 mile bike ride on the Capital Crescent Trail and I loved it!
That is the good news.
It has come to my attention that I am kind of fat.
That is the bad news.
Hopefully, those two pieces of news will take care of themselves. By taking the Capital Crescent Trail about 12 miles to work a few days a week, I hope to have fun AND melt away the pizza pounds at the same time. (NB: This will work better if I stop adding NEW pizza pounds. Believe me, I am trying to work up to that.)
My bike had just been sitting around, gathering dust, ever since it came out of storage 7 months ago. It was leaning up against my bedroom wall and the tires were deflated and it looked very sad. So a couple mornings ago I filled up the tires and rode it a couple times around my apartment's parking lot... seemed sturdy enough... the next day was beautiful and so I decided to see what the trails around here have to offer...
Wow!
It was a blast!
I was kind of nervous at first, because I haven't ridden in a while, and because the first part of the trail is a packed gravel, which I'm not used to - it's kind of bumpy. But after a few minutes I got the hang of it, and over four miles went by like they were nothing. I rested briefly near a fountain in beautiful downtown Bethesda, took a couple pictures to prove I had been there.
The ride back was even better than the ride out, because I was more comfortable and knew what to expect. In total I rode almost nine miles and I could have gone a lot farther. This bodes well for my 12 mile commute!
I'm thinking that for a while, I can just do the one-way trip there, and then put my bike on the bus rack in the evening. Once I build up my endurance a bit more, then I can tackle 25 mile days (and a somewhat more uphill trail ride going home).
One problem I noticed was that, because I wasn't wearing my wrap-around sunglasses and hadn't taken any allergy medication that day, my eyes became so teary at one point I could barely see!
But once I'm all Zyrtec'd up and wearing sunglasses, I should be fine.
Bike riding is a lot more fun than running, and I reaaaallly hope I can build this into my life. I've already gone on an Amazon shopping spree for a "SCREAMING YELLOW" windbreaker, a SCREAMING YELLOW pair of bike gloves, some nifty padded bike shorts with SCREAMING YELLOW accents, a bike mirror, and an iPhone holder so I can track speed and distance and all that. Yes, yes, I know, probably overkill, but I like my accoutrements. :-)
I'll do my next bike ride either Friday evening after work, or on Saturday. The first commute to work is planned for Monday morning. It should take a little over an hour, which may sound like a lot, but it's only about 20 minutes longer than my Metro commute takes normally.
Onward!!!
