First bike commute of the year

Posted by Rachel

I’ve been noticing that our blog lacks updating a bit during the weekdays, so I’ll make an entry here to spice things up. Monday I went for a “brick”- a swim directly followed by a spin class. Actually, here’s a side story about swimming. I grew up on the east coast, where we trained outside maybe three months out of the year. When I moved to California, it was the strangest thing to me that all pools are outside. Even though it does get cold(ish) in the “winter” months, the pools are heated and people still swim outside. In fact, one of the funny memories I have from the Boston Marathon is from right after we checked into our hotel, and on the way to our room Travers (my native- Californian husband) asked, completely dumbfounded, “They have an indoor pool?!” The reason this side story is relevant (sort of) is because Monday it was warm and sunny out and the pool was PACKED. The previous Monday it was raining and at the same time of day, Travers and I were the only two people to be seen anywhere near the pool. I really just cannot understand how a little rain deters people from a sport where you’re completely submerged in water, but I digress.

Moving on in the week, I had a fun track workout yesterday since there was a large group of us running it together. Then today Travers and I picked up an old habit that we started last summer. On Wednesdays, we bike home from work (about 29 miles, almost 2000 ft of climbing, almost always into the wind). It was our first full bike commute of the season and it went pretty well. Somehow, it was faster than all of my commutes last summer when I was in much better shape. I did try a new strategy of ducking to get “smaller” into the wind, and that seems to have gone well so maybe I’ll try that more. I guess I can see why people get those fancy triathlon bars for their bikes. I’ll leave you with a picture from our commute:

(It looks like a picture of a silver car, but I promise it’s the sunset over the San Francisco Bay)

I’d also include a picture of my dinner here, if I hadn’t scarfed it down (scarved? what is the past tense of food scarfing?) immediately after it hit my plate. Also, our next bike ride is the East Bay bagel challenge, so stay tuned for THAT (intrigued yet?).