rolling along

It's the first day after spring break and I am feeling very blah in the gray Providence weather. I spent a week in Puerto Rico with a couple of friends which was amazing. I'd never been to the Carribean before, nor had I really ever "done spring break." Well, it wasn't the typical college spring break at our old folk and family resort, but the beach was beautiful and I had a wonderful, relaxing time. I got to go hiking in a rainforest, swimming at the bottom of a waterfall, and kayaking in a bioluminescent bay at night (which was pretty extraordinary).

Now that I'm back at Brown I have a week and a half before my thesis presentation and a little over two weeks before my first draft is due. I made a resolution to ride my bike every day but already on the second day I've fallen down on the job -- I spent the morning working in the lab with some data, and then I had class, and after that it was raining and I was back in the library (where I still am). I just discovered this amazing piece of software called endnote which will apparently organize all of my citations and references for me and even write the bibliography -- so all is not gloomy.

I'm taking a spinning class which meets Tuesday and Thursday mornings as part of my training for the trip. When I signed up I was pretty sure that I would hate it; I mean, an hour of super-intense cycling, in place, crammed in a room with a ton of other people, being yelled at by some fitness-crazed instructor? What's to like?

But, it turns out it isn't that bad. My instructor is actually the physiology professor at Brown who's both knowledgeable and (thankfully) calm. He talks a lot about heartrate zones (from 1 to 5) and the importance of recovery. Now when I bike around campus I'm more aware of how hard I'm working it helps to know that even though the hill I'm biking on may look long, I know from spinning that I can keep going at this intensity for enough time. So I'm gaining a lot of confidence in my riding. It's also kind of a rush to imagine when we're biking up a "hill" in class that I'm biking up some huge mountain in the desert or something.

Another piece of good news is that I'm going Wednesday morning to get fitted for my bike! I am so excited. Here's the bike I will most likely get (unless the guys version fits my unlady-like self better) . It's quite a step up from Esmerelda.