How did that happen?

“Why do birds suddenly appear
Every time you are near?
Just like me, they long to be
Close to you.”

Although I think this Carpenters song is one of the all-time corniest songs (sorry Sheryl) it does capture that feeling of being in love. As many of my friends know, five months ago I posted a craigs list personals ad and met my now-boyfriend, Rey. Rey is a Brazilian triathlete who loves to ride his bike (road and mountain). He’s fun, smart, athletic, nurturing and a good communicator. He is handy with tools and he’s an awesome cook! And, therein lies the problem. I’ve gained a pound for every month we’ve been together. That’s 5 lbs. people!

Rey loves to cook and cooks for us all the time. His food is so damn good I often find myself having seconds. Perhaps not such a good idea when those seconds come in the form of rice with cashew nuts or omelets with cheese. Not to mention that I haven’t been riding consistently due to work, travel and some degree of laziness.

Perhaps I wouldn’t be as self-conscious about my weight gain if Rey wouldn’t grab at my love-handles. Note to guys: DO NOT grab at your woman’s love handles, stomach pooch, or other fatty body part! It does not feel like an affectionate gesture. If you want to be affectionate, give us a kiss on the cheek, hold our hands or give us a warm hug. Reaching for our body fat (other than our boobs or butts) only makes us feel uncomfortable and sooo un-sexy!

Thankfully, Rey is being understanding about my weight gain and has promised to help me lose it. Ideally, I’ll lose the weight faster than I gained it. Just in time for the holidays. ;-)

Interval training is so much fun!

Thursday nights have become nights to look forward to ever since Beth began organizing interval training rides at the port. Tonight, the plan was to do: (1) tempo/tt pace efforts (2) sprints (3) leadouts.

The interval training participants tonight were: Beth, Alicia, Morgan, Laura and myself.





The first interval felt soooo long. We did one port lap and I figured that we would end our effort somewhere before making that first right-curve turn. Nope, Beth, Laura and Morgan were still pedaling hard up ahead so I kept going. I had to start playing games with myself to distract myself from the heavy breathing I was doing (e.g., tell myself I just had 60 more seconds to go, count down from 60 and then start all over again). It wasn't until we neared the train tracks underneath the bart tracks that we went into our recovery mode. Ughhh, that felt hard!

For the second interval set, Beth sprayed two green lines to mark the start and end points for our sprints. Unfortunately, the green paint was hard to see and we kept having to search for them. Despite our difficulty in finding our start and end lines, I really enjoyed doing the second interval set. It was cool seeing my computer monitor read 25 mph. (Nonetheless, I hope to get faster by the end of the summer.)





The third set was a little confusing at first. However, I did a leadout with Beth and it then became clearer what the objective was. I think this is something I'll need to practice a lot.

After we were done with our intervals, Beth, Laura and I headed over to Manzanita Restaurant in Emeryville/Oakland for a vegetarian dinner. Except for the bland thing in the middle, the dinner was really good.




It was during this meal that I learned that I'm not the only one who eats two lunches at work (lunch # 1 for me is around 11 a.m. and lunch # 2 is around 1:30 p.m.) It turns out that Laura & Beth also eat two lunches while at work! Cool, now I don't feel like such a piggy.





The ride back home was chilly but at least I had a yummy meal in my tummy.

By the way, I measured my quads when I got home and I'm now at 58 cm!!!!! If I keep doing these interval rides, I just may catch up to Beth's 59+ cm quad measurements. Yes!

(Other pics from tonight's ride can be found at my flickr album: http://www.flickr.com/photos/yinyangcarol/sets/72157604005149810/