I got to start my day with a 19 mile bike ride this morning - woo hoo! My mom took the munchkins last night, so J and I spiffed up the bikes last night and took to the trails this morning after loading up on a couple of bagels. My bike has been around for about 11 years, so while it's a good bike, it's nothing like the newer, lighter bikes that a lot of folks have (J, I'm looking at you). But it gets me through, and I managed to not even fall today. I know that sounds strange, but if you've never clipped into pedals before, there's no way you can understand the fear of forgetting to unclip or not having time to unclip and basically tipping over on the bike because your feet are attached to the pedals. Exercisewise, it makes sense - you can use your legs on both the downstroke and the upstroke. Stresswise, most of the time I think I'd prefer the old fashioned pedals, but I'm afraid I'd fall too far behind with those.
The last time we did a ride, I was pretty happy with where my cardio was; this time, I could REALLY tell that I've spent some serious time on my cardio. My legs didn't get all that tired, and I hung with J a good bit of the time. Of course, we'll ignore the fact that his super fancy watch told him that he'd only put forth a "maintaining" effort for the ride, and I'll just live in fantasy land for a bit longer. And besides, he dropped me enough for me to know I'm nowhere near his speed. Ah well.
Anyway, it was a beautiful day for a ride, and we ended up riding a good bit of the distance out towards Pinnacle on the River Trail. The scenery was amazing - I sort of felt like I was on vacation, out for a biking jaunt. I forget how beautiful it can be here. At one point we were riding along the road with the ridge to our left, the river or some other body of water to our right, and beautiful lawns and forests all around. It was pretty fantastic.
So we wrap that the ride around noon, pick up the kids, and hit the tennis courts right after lunch. J's tennis team is going to state this year, and a few of them wanted to play doubles but couldn't find a fourth, so I joined in. It's been over a week since I've hit, so it was nice to get my strokes back and find some timing. The kiddos were amazing while we played a couple of sets (gotta love Sonic Oreo blast bribery), and then we finished the day by cleaning out the girl's closet. I don't even want to talk about what a disaster it has been in there since probably before Christmas. I hauled out two large trashbags of clothes that she no longer likes or can wear. Ahhhhh. MUCH better, and much less stressful in the morning. She crowned the organizational fest by hanging her clothes in her preferred order - school shirt, school shorts. School shirt, school shorts. She doesn't even have to think about it in the morning.
There's still a ton of stuff that needs doing, but I pulled the mothers' day card and asked J to go pick up Carinos for dinner. I don't feel too bad about that - after all the activity and stuff that still needs doin', the last thing I wanted to do today was cook. And I just might break out some of J's Mac 18...after all, it's my day, right?
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