Fully Adjusted to Retirement.

.  My last day at work was June 6 2010. It didn’t take long to get into the retirement mode and it gets better every year. I get all the chores done around the house in between bike rides it seems.  Cut the front yard, go for a bike ride.  Cut the back yard, go for another ride. Walk the dogs. Ride. Clean out the garage. Ride.  

I’m getting into a routine of doing a morning ride into the city for a late breakfast or lunch. I don’t have my first food till noon time daily after fasting from 8 PM the night before. One of my blog followers, or a blog I follow talked about daily fasting and it is a pretty easy way to loose weight.Fast for 16 hours a day.  I go from 8 PM to noon but it can be any 16 hours.  If you like breakfast at 7 AM, don’t eat after 3 PM.  You get the point.  Just don’t eat junk food when you break the fast.

The morning rides are pretty mellow with lots of stop and go for pictures, chatting with people, reading the paper over coffee, or just stopping somewhere and sit for a while. The evening rides are something different.  It’s an all out hammerfest with the goal of increasing endurance and speed. Over the last three months my average speed has increased from 11 MPH to over 15 MPH over my 25 mile training  course.

When we are out of shape we tend to downplay riding fast on our bikes.  As we improve our conditioning, speed and endurance become more important.  Last year when I was having problems riding because of a low iron count, I often wrote about how I no longer had any desire to ride fast.  Probably because I couldn’t. Now that I can, I want to get better at riding.  I do like the casual rides much better than the fast ones, but I really feel that the work I put into getting fitter and faster make the casual rides more enjoyable.

Every day begins though with a long walk with the dogs.  The cat just sleeps. He is deaf and has gained a lot of weight over the years