I popped in The Wedding Singer for motivation. It turned out to be a great movie to watch during my sufferfest. One part that I particularly enjoyed—and that had a beat that facilitated the perfect cadence—was the scene where he sings Love Stinks. That is one of my favorite scenes . . . period. This might have to go into a spinning playlist on the computer, especially since I won’t be able to crank up the TV volume now that my downstairs neighbor has returned from her winter vacation.

I was going to do an hour-long workout of fairly steady spinning. Instead, I started off with a cadence of 90 rpm in a moderate-effort gear. I did that for 10 minutes. Then, I shifted into a harder gear and pedaled at a somewhat varying cadence of 88 to 100 rpm. That was hard. After the five-minute interval, I dropped it down into a really easy gear and kept the cadence around 70 or 80 rpm and spent the next five minutes regaining my breath and lowering my heart and respiration rates to much more bearable levels. I repeated the moderate, 10-minute interval; the hard, five-minute interval; and the easy, five-minute interval twice more.

The last hard, five-minute interval was a little too much for me. I had to stop pedaling for 20 seconds about halfway through; then, I resumed the hard effort to finish the interval. Wow. It. Hurt. So. Bad. During the last half of that interval, I suddenly heard some motivational voices pop into my head. The first was Gilad from the butt-kicking, strength-training videos I did last winter. “You can do it! This last interval is going to change your muscle!” Then, suddenly, another familiar thing popped into my head: “WINNING!”

It’s amazing what our minds ponder in the midst of suffering.

This is a year-in-review for Moronacity Cycling. Three best of lists follow. Links will open in a new window.

Best Photos of 2011

A link to the original post follows each picture.

Glen and Ali’s Fourth of July Weekend—A Photo Essay Part I

2011 MMBA Annual Meeting & Expo—A Photo Essay

2011 Ride of Silence—A Photo Essay

Recreation 101 at the Holly Recreation Area

Hopkins Lake Requires a Rear Brake

Glen and Ali’s Fourth of July Weekend—A Photo Essay Part II

Hopkins Lake Requires a Rear Brake

Glen and Ali’s Fourth of July Weekend—A Photo Essay Part III

Trouble at Addison Oaks

Best Posts of 2011

The following are my favorite posts of 2010:

• Race across the Sky
• 2011 Tour de France Finale: Félicitations Cadel!
• Chrysler-Eminem Commercial Evokes Detroit Pride
• Di’s Abridged History of Wheels
• Art and Swill

Best Photo Essays of 2011

The following are my favorites.

• Trouble at Addison Oaks—A Photo Essay
• Glen and Ali’s Fourth of July Weekend—A Photo Essay Part II
• Happy Father’s Day, Dad

I was so spent after that interval that I had to hop off my bike to go fill up my glass, and quickly return for a five-minute easy spin. Afterwards, I finished the pyramid by repeating the second hardest effort, and proceeding in the reverse order of the first part of my workout.

I pedaled at a moderate effort at an 80 to 90 rpm cadence for 10 minutes and then decided to finish with three sprints. Each was in a harder gear, as fast as I could pedal while maintaining a little control, and for 30 seconds with 90-second rest periods in between. I then finished with 10 minutes of moderate spinning, because the easy cooldown that I had been doing over the past week now felt too easy.

The good news is that there was a noticeable improvement over my last workout! This is the golden carrot dangling in front of my face, encouraging me to continue my training. My new goal is to complete that pyramid without having to stop. Any bets on how long that will take?

Do you have any idea how good that made me feel? I’m looking slimmer! Someone noticed! Do I think I’m slimmer? No. Do I weigh less? Not yet. Someone thinks I look slimmer, though!

I’ve been so down on myself about my weight, lately, so I felt my face go aglow and my smile beam when I heard this compliment. It’s almost as if it were the first time I received it, but I guess it really depends on my current frame of mind.

I have heard this before, and almost always when I have not lost weight, but when I started exercising regularly, like now. I’ve been pretty good, this week! In addition to regular exercise, I’ve been a little more reserved with my diet, and I’m working on eating more fruit, again. That’s not always so easy, especially when my cravings are for cheese and meat. How odd a woman am I? My cravings aren’t for donuts or milk chocolate. I want cheese and meat!

My biggest issue has been with bloating. I am a woman—for those of you who haven’t figured it out—so I do suffer regular bloat cycles predetermined by my DNA. Unfortunately, I add to it by eating high-sodium foods, particularly when I go out. If I drink beer instead of iced tea, that doesn’t help. After all, the tea will wash out the salt, and that will keep me from getting so darn bloated to begin with! Beer consumption, well, I’m pretty sure you’ve experienced that for yourself.

Perhaps my operator’s manual goes something like this:

• Diet keeps things working well.
• Exercise strengthens, stretches, energizes, and slims.

Seems simple, doesn’t it?

I’ve been doing quite well with my workouts throughout the holiday weekend. Wednesday, December 21 was the first day on the trainer (see Jake’s New Toy). I “trained” again on Thursday for 40 minutes. I sprinkled in three sprints, and my heart responded by saying, “No, not gonna slow down until you get off this damn bike.”

Friday, I got out for a hike at Stony Creek with Kristi, Eric, Nick, Marty, Steve, Walter, Chili, Roxie, Dobby, and Coriander: six people, five dogs. We spent two hours hiking all over the place. I was ready to quit long before we did, but I’m really glad that we were out for as long as we were. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I also really needed it. I guess you could say that my friends took me for a much-needed walk. Here are some awesome photos from that hike:

Saturday and Sunday were travel days for Christmas with the family, so I didn’t get any exercise, but I managed to get back on schedule with a 40-minute walk along some of the streets of Mount Clemens, yesterday. Cori wasn’t quite sure she wanted to leave the apartment. I think she thought I was going to throw her back into the car for a ride to God only knows where, but she perked up when she realized that we were hitting the pavement sans driving.

Today, I took Nick’s advice of popping in a movie during my trainer workout. Since I’m still working my way through Christmas movies, I popped in Holiday Inn. It really did make it easier to get through the workout. I managed to spin for 60 minutes. I did some faster spinning at about 90 rpm, switching between an easier and a medium gear. In fact, the faster spinning felt better than the slower spinning. This is good. It was somewhat of a challenge syncing my cadence with the early-40s music, but I managed, and I realized that musicals are great for trainer workouts. The movie focuses my mind on the plot, while the music encourages me to switch it up a bit. The problem is that I don’t own very many musicals.

I had to do three sprints toward the end of the workout. To make it more challenging, and to shock my muscles into being like little rock stars and fine-tuning their craft, which just happens to be being strong and fast, I like to do sprints or simulate hills as much as I can in my quaint, little living room.

So it seems that I have a bit of a routine, and I intend to keep it up. Instead of going gung-ho on the cycling, I am going to continue alternating cycling with walking. This means that Cori and Jake get equal time. Aside from keeping the dog and bike happy, it also keeps my body happy. While I’m going through the “getting back into shape” phase, I think it’s best to give my legs rest days between trainer workouts. In the past, my legs have responded quite well to rest days, coming back much stronger for the next workout.

If I can keep this up, I’ll be ready for race season.

I thought, “I really need to ride. I think I’ll email the friends.” So, I checked the forecast only to see a bit of rain in the no-so-distant future. I thought, “Crap, I guess I won’t email the friends.” Man, I really need to get a trainer so I can do a trainer session. I’m feeling like a caged hamster without a wheel, and I really need to justify that burrito.

The burrito in question was the ever-so-awesome, handcrafted burrito from Chipotle. I haven’t had Chipotle in a while, and I’m having one of those fun weeks during which I crave lots of stuff I don’t normally eat—today, I ate peanut M&Ms and a Pay Day; I don’t normally eat candy. It is also one of those weeks when I easily succumb to temptation and even suffer a little crankiness. Fortunately for me, I chose to forego the burrito in favor of a BLAT (bacon, lettuce, avocado, tomato) sandwich. Yum. I had my first BLAT when I was stationed out in Monterey, California during my Army days. That was a while ago. Those were the days when my dining life was significantly improved by the introduction of the avocado. Did I say “yum?”

Anyway, Bob replied to my Facebook post with a link to the “Pay It Forward” thread in the MMBA Forum. Thank you, Bob! Someone was giving his old trainer away because someone gave him another one. I told the guy I wanted the trainer and made arrangements to pick it up on my way into work, which was fairly close to his work. Yay!

At lunchtime, I figured the pooch could wait and opted to go to Jimmy John’s for a #12 with extra avocado (no surprise, there). I knew I was going to go straight home and try out the trainer, and the #12 was an excellent reason to do so. I was so excited about the trainer! I still am!

My biggest issue with living in Lower Michigan is that outdoor recreation is a bit of a challenge. While there are a lot of great options in the Detroit Area, the weather doesn’t like to cooperate. For this reason, I wasn’t getting enough exercise, so my metabolism wasn’t increasing. Boo! I’ve tried dieting, and even successfully lost four pounds plus the added six I gained on my work trip to Denver. The problem was that I was starving. Face it, if your stomach is hurting, even after eating, you just aren’t getting enough food, and I was going for high-fiber, high-protein food.

The only solution is to do what I did in my Keweenaw days: exercise! Boost that metabolism! This is why we ride bikes, right? Well, that, and it’s a lot of fun to push yourself just close enough to the edge of reason that you might get hurt, and probably will at some point. Okay, so we ride bikes because we like to eat and we’re just a little crazy. Check!

I think there’s a third reason why the trainer is going to be useful, and this is kind of odd. My body is definitely out of balance. The muscles along the right side are tight, and they always have been. Riding only makes this worse. It also seems to promote knots in my upper back, as well.

One thing I’ve noticed, while riding Jake, is that it seems like I ride with the bike slightly leaning to the left. I can always see the right side of the bike, but not the left. I did the same thing on the trainer, today. So, I chose to lean my body slightly the left so that the frame was lined up below me. After 40 minutes of riding, I had no knee pain—something that I usually have to work through on the right side. In fact, everything felt fine when I got off the bike! I think the trainer is going to encourage me to align everything correctly, which will lead to more balanced muscle strength. Awesome.

Riding the trainer is hard. This is harder than any road workout I’ve done. Holy crapola! Even my easy gear was challenging. I managed to do about 70 rpm at a hard effort, and then about six total minutes (split into two occurrences) at an even harder effort, because there was really only hard and harder. I did a five-minute “cool down” at a not quite as hard effort, but it was still frickin’ hard.

Goal: 40 minute workouts, four times per week. Then, I’ll go from there.

It was a race across the sky: the sun versus Di.

I saw it sneaking up on the horizon as my plane flew from Detroit. The tiny glow gradually grew along the eastern horizon. Would I see the sun rise in a plane? Wouldn’t that be cool!

Today is blowing my mind a bit. I expected the worst and got the best. I researched the hell out of flying. I had to make a 6:30 a.m. flight out of Detroit for Denver for a weeklong conference for work. I hadn’t flown since 2004, and I stopped flying because I was tired of dealing with security. Every time I flew out of Marquette, I was patted down. Not cool. So, last night, I devised a plan based on what I read on various blogs and the TSA website.

I placed all liquids in my checked baggage, so that was a non-issue for my carry-ons. I placed all of my electronic devices in my laptop case. I cleaned out my purse, last night, to leave only the basic necessities. I wore my business clothes that didn’t have pockets.

I made sure I looked good. Even though I had to get up at 2 a.m. after only three hours of sleep, I dolled myself up, drank a half a pot of coffee, and dressed very well. Damn it, I was going to use what I had to make going through security much easier, and it worked. Even the TSA guy who was grumpy and short with everyone in front of me was super sweet and nice and even smiled at me when he instructed me what to do. Girl power!

I arrived in Denver around 7:30 a.m. Mountain and checked into my hotel probably around 8:30 a.m. This is the part that is still screwing with my head. I’ve been up since 2 a.m. Eastern. As I write this, it is 1:00 p.m. Eastern, but it’s 11:00 a.m. Mountain, and I’ve been up for 9 hours! An hour ago, they were still serving breakfast at my hotel. I ate my lunch on the plane probably around 7:30 a.m. Eastern/5:30 a.m. Mountain. I think I need more coffee. I’m starting to wonder if I’m even making sense. All I know is that my schedule is severely screwed up, and that I am going to sleep like a baby, tonight. Of course, I’m going to have to stop drinking coffee at some point.

My sleep-deprived, over-caffeinated body is confused, but it’s not going to slow down anytime soon. The sun finally caught up with me and it is now shining on the beautiful Rocky Mountains that are dusted with bright, white show.

This morning, I spent three hours in a plane twisting my spine as I turned to look out my window in search of that sun. I was keeping tabs on the sunrise, and I was hoping the sun would make an appearance before I landed, but it lost the race across the sky.