biggest bike ride ever

Still amidst the exhaustion mystery.  After Wednesday's day home, Thursday I got up and made it to work...until 3 PM, when I excused myself to return home and to bed for the night.  Ahhh fun.  Friday I was able to work all day.  By 5 I was wiped out with a low-grade headache; back to bed for the night.  This morning my butt was dragging when I got up at 7, but by 10:30 I was up and out for a bike ride!  More on that in a sec.  It's not yet 8 and I'm back in bed.  No headache, not miserable...if this level of tired wasn't part of a pattern, I'd be ignoring it.  But part of learning to love my body is definitely listening to what it tells me.  Since it's been saying exhausted" for most of a month, I'll listen and rest, even when I'm not "wretchedly so."  If I haven't said so here yet:  I have a doctor appointment on Wednesday.  Help is on the way.

Now...back to that bike ride!  You might recall that last weekend I rode 36 miles.  The turn-around was hard for me; the trail was sooooo beautiful ahead.  But I'm always quite aware that going back home means not running myself out before turning around!  So today I cut through Rock Island and Moline on 14th/16th Avenue, shaving something like 8 miles off the early portion of my journey.  This left me able to go on down the trail a piece further, through Port Byron and turning around at Camp Hauberg, just shy of Colona.  Uhhh.  43 MILES!!!  Wooooohoooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!  Now you KNOW I'm dying to hit the "50" mark before the best of biking season passes.  

I have this new-to-me pair of exercise pants from a friend.  I wore them for the first time earlier this week to my first Zumba class, only to discover that I have Too Much Butt for them.  They rode down repeatedly throughout the class, causing me to have to tug them up every 10 or so steps...pretty sure those around me got a kind of "pants on the ground" show in between tugs.  Since I've been mostly riding in jeans, I decided to see if these pants could be repurposed to biking pants.  After all, my butt is stationary on the bike.  And I'm wearing black bike shorts under them, black t-shirt and black jacket over them.  So even if they shift southward...who's gonna know?  

One challenge:  Wilma has no chain guard, so I have to ride with pants rolled almost up to the knees so her chain won't destroy them.  The pants are kind of spandex-y, so I didn't trust them not to unroll themselves as my legs moved all day.  Solution:

Binder clips!  One per pant leg.  A trick I learned on a blog of a lady who rides regularly in dresses.  Tell you what:  it worked!  (And yes, I realize my legs are glowingly white...don't hate!)


The nice thing about my water backpack:  it's a great place to transport food.  Some nice "Nut Thin" crackers, a single-size peanut butter, and a stick of string cheese fit nicely in next to the water bag.  Great re-energizer, just past the half-point.  


Riding along the mighty Mississippi on a fall day is a real treat.  A couple of views from my ride can be found here if you're interested (blogger seems to be struggling to upload them to this page). 


Overall a fun day.  Now...the Aleve is kicking in, and sleep is calling my name...after all, it's almost 8:30, peeps!