The Weekend In Review @ Bolinas Ridge and SF Stairs

I forgot to mention in my last post that I fell on my a$$ in the locker room at the pool on Thursday. Slipped on some water and leg went flying up in front of me with the full force of all 170 pounds of me (hee!) landing on my left forearm and my butt. About 10 tweeners witnessed it and all expressed a lot of sympathy and started sharing their falls-in-the-locker-room tales. I'm ok, just bruised.

So on Friday I rode my bike to the gym and did Week 6 Day 3 of c25k. That's 25 minutes jogging with no breaks! I'm not going to pretend it was easy. I kept waiting for it to get easier but it just sort of stayed challenging. I wasn't dying and out of breath and my legs weren't burning, it was just not easy, ya know? Anyway, I'm going to repeat Week 6 next week as per my usual plan. Oh, but every time I took a step my butt hurt where I fell. Jiggle Jiggle.

On Saturday Miguel and I had plans to go on a bike ride. I picked one out of Bay Area Bike Rides. This book doesn't rate rides on a scale of difficulty, the author gives you the route, elevation profile and a description like "moderately hilly" and lets you figure it out from there. So I picked this ride in Bolinas that starts in town and rides up to Bolinas Ridge and across the mountain ridge and then back down to town. This is one Mr. Hosler describes as Moderately Hilly. I'll try and make a long story short from here on out. We realized the ride was longer than we had time for so we decided to ride up to the ridge and do the mountain trail portion of the ride only.

As we drove up the 5 mile road we had planned to ride our bikes up I quickly realized there is no way in hell I could have cycled up that road.
It was so intense that someone painted, about every mile or so, in huge white letters across the road, words like DESPERATION, REGRET, SUFFERING. Can you imagine? At the top, where we stopped and parked, the word RELIEF was painted across the crest of the road. Hmph. Moderately Hilly. Sure.

So we parked but noticed it was really crowded, lots of people standing around in this really remote area. We got out and asked what was going on. An endurance trail run of 52 miles was being done on the trail we planned to ride, the Bolinas Ridge Trail. Oh boy. We got our bikes out and took a crack at it. The trail was really nice, technically and physically challenging but doable for me, even if I had to walk up some hills. But there were almost always joggers around us. It made it hard to enjoy the trail. Once the trail turned really hard we decided that the combo of joggers and really hard was too much and we turned around. When we got back to our car we'd ridden three measly miles. I won't call it a total waste...the 1 hour drive there was beautiful, we got to know a trail we'll probably return to some day and...Miguel took a few nice pictures of me :) Here they are...





On the second one Miguel was trying to take one of me riding but didn't realize the camera was zoomed in. I really like the way it turned out though, even though it is so not flattering. Chin looks fat, tire roll at the waist, and my big chubby arm in the center of the shot. Hey, I'm just being honest! Anyway, I came home and got ready to go out to dinner with some friends. I had a really good Italian meal with desert! Oh the Points. I couldn't even really take a guess so I just wiped out the rest of my daily Points and counted 20 WPA's. That's what I will do when it's just too hard to try and figure out.

A quick note on eating. I overate at meals twice this week. I think my stomach has shrunk or whatever but I sometimes forget I can't eat like I used to. On Friday night we went to In-n-Out Burgers with a friend. I had a burger, fries and a milkshake. The milkshake was a mistake. I felt so full afterward that my stomach just hurt. I ate too much last night (Saturday) too and my stomach hurt. Both times I felt awful and tried to sear the pain into my memory to stop me from doing it again. I have been feeling very foody lately and just want to be eating all the time. I think that's what makes me eat too much. I need to do more snacking between meals.

So this morning I did a "Stairway" walk in SF. Here's how the organizer described it:

"The machines at the gym are fine for the work week but on the weekend there is a much better option - San Francisco’s collection of hills and staircases can elevate your heart rate as well as your spirit while building those buns of steel. As an added incentive we can get a group workout and have some fun while enjoying great views and fresh air that you just can’t get on a conventional stairmaster."

I had to be in The City at 9:30am. Blech. It was a lot of fun though. The stairs were great exercise and the views were fabulous. Here's a few pictures:





After the walk I went to my second bicycle maintenance class. We took apart the rear section, took off the chain, learned how to fix a chain, learned how to adjust the rear derailleur, took the pedals off and on, etc. It was really fun. I've learned so much in that class. I really feel like I can handle more common problems now that might come up on the road or trail.

Whew! I'm home now and I'm tired. I mean tired. I'm going to bed now. I hope you all had a fabulous weekend too!

p.s. I'm going to take the advice from Swizzlepop and Aslant and not lower my Daily Points Allowance when I drop into the 160's. That might not happen this week though due to aforementioned overeating problem. Thanks for all the support!