8 years is a long time

So, it turns out that 8 years is a long time to not have ridden your bike for "speed".

The husband and I used to ride our bikes obsessively every weekend at least 40 miles each day (otherwise we didn't think it justified loading the bikes up on the car and driving out to the countryside) and ride three to four nights per week at the Memorial Park Picnic Loop.  And on those nights we would average 20 miles/hour.  People used to draft off of us as long as they could stay with us, but when we got tired of having "wheel-suckers", we would put the hammer down, ramp it up, and just leave them in our dust.  *sigh*  Those were the days...

Last night (date night!), in preparation for Fatty's 100 Miles of Nowhere, we loaded up the road bikes and headed off to Memorial Park to get a taste for how painful this ride is truly going to be.  And on a scale of 1 to 10, I'd say I'm going to be at about a 7.  (Reserving 10 for something like passing a kidney stone or having a ruptured abdominal cyst or something like that - both of which I've heard were excruciating.  I'd say that natural childbirth was about an 8.  So, not quite as bad as that.  But close.)

Anyway...  We attempted to ride fast enough to make forward progress, but not fast enough that we didn't feel we would be able to sustain the effort for 100 miles.  I think we failed at the latter goal.  There's no way I'm going to be able to keep the pace that we were going and we were only going about 17.5 miles per hour.  And that was pushing it.  Oh, the pain that we are in for!!!

In other news, 8 days is also a long time.  I'm trying to see if I lose fat any faster by not drinking alcohol.  It's been about 8 days since I've had any alcohol.  I'm surprised my system hasn't gone into complete shock.  But the jury is still out regarding whether or not my middle is getting any thinner, so I'm beginning to wonder if it's worth it...  ;)