I can be your hero, lady

I've been riding my bike like mad over here and as a result my legs are slowly morphing into tree trunks. My muscles keep getting shorter and fatter and the next time you see me there's a good chance my legs will be approximately  three inches in length. Despite this fact I refuse to stop riding my bike and switch up my workouts. I happen to love riding more than just about anything else so not even short, stubby legs will deter me.

It's still quite warm every morning when I leave for my rides but even so, I am starting to panic about the cooler weather. Every year I take a few weeks off when it gets cold and chilly and I don't want to do that this year so I think I'll be prepared  and buy cold weather gear and suck it up and go out no matter how low the temperature gets. I just want to avoid that hideous look I get on my face when bitter winds are whipping me right in the face. You  know the one. Lips pursed, eyes squinting, tears streaming down my cheeks as I try not to scream out cuss words. The combination of my three inch legs and that look on my face sounds pretty sexy, doesn't it? Greg is one lucky guy!

This morning I left right around 6:10 and the moon was still out and shining over Lake Gertude and Lake Dora. Perfect riding weather. As I was finishing up my Lakeshore Drive portion of my ride, I pulled over at a stop sign to take a quick water break and an older woman pulled up alongside me in her gorgeous, shiny Mercedes. I thought, "oh, geez, she's gonna be a do gooder and ask if I need money," because yes, I still look like a homeless person when I ride. By the way, I would have taken something if she gave it to me. I'm not above that at all. Instead, she rolled down her window and said she would rather be riding her bike than heading off to work. I said, "yeah, sucks being you, you rich bitch." No, I didn't say that. But that would have been funny, right? Actually what I said was something about how yes, I'm quite glad I get a chance to ride everyday in the early morning hours, but really, don't be too jealous, I have four kids at home depending on me to educate and feed them and they almost never leave me alone.

It seems she really didn't want to go to work because she then told me how sad she was to hear about Lance Armstrong basically admitting he was a cheater, which come on lady, how naive are you, professional athletes these days are all cheaters, get over it. She asked who we could look up to now, where are all the biking heroes, and then I pointed at myself and smiled. Really, I will be your biking hero, lady. You can even sponsor me and buy me a new bike if you want.

I saw Lance Armstrong on Oprah once. He seemed to be concerned that some people may not realize how amazing he was so he spent a good portion of the interview reminding everyone. Anyway, now that he's no longer the biking world's hero ( although I'm pretty sure most people don't care about the cheating thing) I'm willing to step in. 

My life is pretty heroic. Every night I go to bed after a hard day (no need to elaborate on that one, just trust me, it's very hard!), only to be woken at 2 a.m. by my husband's snoring, at which point I go out to the couch and kick Buster off so I can catch some more sleep and then I wake at 5:30 am and make my toast and  coffee and proceed to ride my bike for a couple of hours for no other reason than it makes me happy. And now that I'm going to be riding in cold weather for the two weeks out of the year that it actually gets cold in Florida, I'm even more heroic. Go ahead and be dazzled.