SBD: Attempt 2, Day 2...then more crap about riding my bike

I'm happy to report that day 1 of my second South Beach diet attempt was almost completely on track. There was the oat bran substitution after my egg mishap, and a couple squares of dark chocolate after dinner, but everything else I ate was South Beachy-keen. (I'm so sorry.)

Day 2 has been a little more rocky. I didn't buy eggs last night and slept in this morning, so breakfast was from that place with the big red and yellow sign. I minimized the damage by throwing away the hashbrowns and barely sweetening the coffee, but still. I thought I'd last more than ONE DAY before hitting a drive-thru.

Anyway, to look on the bright side, the day from that point onward has been right on track. Also, I worked out at lunch today, and plan on going for a ride after work. My goal is to do my 16-mile after-work loop in under an hour. With stop signs and traffic lights, that means a 17-18 mph moving average...which is pretty much a sprint speed for me, at this point. If I meet that goal and don't die, I'll be very happy. I won't be wearing the heart rate monitor, as those numbers would only kill my buzz. :)

So, what lit a fire under my ass today? Well, since I set up a timer to record the Tour de France last month, my DVR has been capturing anything with "Cycling" in its title. Since every bike event on Versus has "Cycling" as the title, it's caught a variety of cycling events that I never would have watched otherwise. I don't even watch them now, usually, but last night I turned one on thinking it was the abbreviated coverage of the last week of the tour. Instead, I found myself watching summary coverage of the women's field in the Nature Valley Grand Prix. It's the first time I've ever seen women's racing, and I was pretty much riveted. All those tiny little bikes, and those girls are fast. And tough! There was this one girl that crashed three times in one of the crit stages, I think, and just got up and kept on going. I think she ended up in the top 10 overall. Now, I'm not saying that the men aren't tough...but it's just different. I expect men to be tough, hardcore, "it's just a flesh wound" sort of people. But these women...too cool. Plus, it was nice to see some other women who probably have trouble finding jeans to fit their waist and their thighs. (For totally better reasons, but you know.)

Now, that's not to say that I want to get out there and race, because I don't. I'm not sure I have the heart or the fearlessness for road racing, even if I do finally lose 60 lbs. I also have no head for tactics, and racing is all about knowing when to attack or form alliances or whatever, and also about working with a team. I've never been good at team sports, or with other people depending on me for anything. But I do want to be fast, and watching these badass women made me believe that maybe I could be. Not, you know, world-class fast, but maybe fast enough to not totally embarrass myself in an amateur race someday, if I ever screwed up the courage to try. Does that make sense? Maybe, maybe not.

So anyway, I watched women race last night, then I read 3 chapters of Floyd Landis's book, and now I'm going to take the world by storm. Or, you know, try to ride 16 miles at 18 mph without passing out. Everybody's gotta start somewhere, right? :)

UPDATE: 15.56 miles in 1:01, according to the display. And that includes a stop to take a phone call. It also includes some wind, which I think helped more than it hurt, though I can't really be sure. I'm happy with it overall.

UPDATE #2: Training Center and Motionbased both agree that the ride was 15.63 miles. Motionbased says that I was stopped for 4:41, so my time was 56:25, moving average was 16.6 mph. My overall average was 15.4, so eh...not even a personal best. But it is nearly 2 mph faster than the last time I rode this course. :)