The day after. (written on Thursday)

The day after the 10 miles bike ride and I feel surprisingly okay...good even.

Yesterday I got up at 5:40am to catch the 6:33 train. Getting up and functioning wasn't easy. I'm still just getting used to getting up at 6am, so an even earlier alarm is not a welcome thing. My body likes routine. It doesn't like and reacts very negatively to changes, especially when that change happens in the morning. To help my body (specifically my stomach) to cope I popped a couple immodiums. I know I know, no one really wants to read about that, but it's my blog...and my IBS to work through.

I got to the office at 7:30 and shortly after was headed toward North Ave Beach by way of cab. We got to the beach and each were given our vehicles of torture (the bikes). I don't really don't know anything about bikes, but they seemed really nice. After a few humiliating photo-ops with the other office peeps, we were off and riding. We rode roughly 1/2 mile and pulled over to stop to wait for some to catch up. At that point I realized that this whole thing was a big mistake. "What were you thinking, Rach?" I thought to myself. My thoughts raced as e slow-pokes caught up, "how in the world are you going to make it another 9.5 miles?!" we pressed on.

The ride was beautiful. It was all along the path by the lake. It was a sunny day, the water and sky were blue, the city was in clear view. We reached the Shedd Aquarium and that whole area...it was our half-way-ish point. We stopped for a bit to wait for the slow-pokes. At this point I was a member of that group. A really frustrating part of this whole ride was that the rest of my office was a part of the front running group. Didn't they say this was a team outting? I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little sad.

I finished out the ride in just under 2 hours. Bleh. To be fair, we did stop for a few more photo-ops along the way which I'm sure greatly affected my time.

Overall, I am glad I did it and am glad it's over. I would like to take that route again though! It was soooo pretty. I've never seen the city from that view before. It reminded me of what a great city I live in (near). Maybe I will take the hubs request to buy bikes a little more seriously...