Long post coming up, so grab a cup of coffee.  Dang, what a day!  Got up and fueled up for a big bike ride today.  Had banana oats cooked with cinnamon and with some fresh  made peanut butter on top.  Sooo good.

We decided to bike to the Saratoga County fair today (my BIL gave us free tickets – awesome!!).  Each way is 25.5 miles.  That makes it 51 miles round trip (or 82 km!!  That sounds so much farther).  Of course, we stopped at the fair for a few hours.  My niece was participating in some 4H stuff at the fair.  We were really hungry by the time we got there.  I could have taken a bite of this sandcastle:

Of course, at the fair there is a sea of food:

Can you believe we found Indian food?  It was actually not bad, and way better than a greasy fair hamburger or corn dog!

We got chicken tikka and korma with basmati rice:

Here are some other hungry little ones, too!

Aren’t they cute?

After a few hours at the fair, we biked back to town to eat before hitting the last 20 miles home.  Wanted a carb hit, so guess what we had??

Is this the fluffiest bagel you have ever seen?  It looks like a brioche!  It was honey wheat.  Yum.  Uncommon Grounds has the best bagels (and really good coffee – they roast their own).

That was good fuel to go the rest of the way home.  There were some serious hills on this ride.  It’s the farthest I have ever ridden in a day ( a littlemore than 4x the distance for my triathlon last week!).   I am pretty pooped now.

Here is what the GoWear fit shows the day to look like:

This is the plan for the rest of the evening:

Watching the tour and blogging!  I have to laugh – that tv is 36 inches and it looks like 12 in this picture!

More answers to the rest of the questions (if you are still reading!)

Did you work with a personal trainer? Nope.  I have read a ton of books and basically have done all this on my own.  There is so much information out there to be had if you dig it up.

Do you have the dreaded “belly flap” – and if so, how bad is the loose skin issue?  Ah, the loose skin issue.  This is the most frequent question asked of me (2nd is how long did it take to lose 100 pounds).  Yes, I have loose skin.  I don’t have the belly flap really, because I have never had kids and my weight was never really carried in my stomach.  The skin on my tummy is loose, but not saggy like my thighs and upper arms are.  You can see in my triathlon pose the loose upper arm skin.   You can see how large my thighs look in the picture in the side bar of me in bike shorts.  A lot of that is loose skin.  I don’t know if I would ever get it removed (if I could afford it), and most times it doesn’t bother me all that much.  Clothed you don’t see it, and it doesn’t bother John.

Where do you find your recipes? And what kind of oats do you use for your morning breakfast? And can you post your recipes again?? I like to read cook books and online recipe sites.  Most recipes are tweaked to make them friendly to my palate or to meet specific nutritional requirements that I want.  Not all are successful LOL!  I use rolled oats all the time.  I am working on getting more of my recipes up here

What is the body weight matrix? It’s a move during the NROLW where you do 24 squats followed by 12 lunges on each leg followed by 12 jumping lunges on each leg followed by 24 jump squats.  Rest for as long as it took you to get through the set and repeat 3x.  It will kill you.

Do you have more goals in mind for youself? I have a few.  Several 5Ks, I want to finish the NROLW.  Possibly a 1/2 marathon, although not sure.  I am really going to enjoy being in good shape right now and do our long rides (like today’s!)

How did you KNOW that this time was THE time you would succeed? What was different from all the other attempts? Okay, funny thing is, I don’t know that the is *the* time or the last time.  I hope it is.  Every time I would try to lose weight I was sure it was the last time.   I can’t even tell you how many people have said the same thing, even big losers who gained it all back thought it would never happen to them.  I have never maintained a weight loss like I have now, so something has changed.  I guess it was me LOL!  The longer I do this, the easier it seems to be. I now really understand much more about nutrition and fitness and how it relates to me and what my body needs.  That is different, instead of trying to force a specific plan or timed weight loss goal or whatever, I let my body tell me what it wants, and how fast it wants to lose, and when to take a break and maintain for a while.  That’s why it has taken me so long. My body and I are friends now instead of battling it out.

Well – you made it to the end – congratulations! 😀