Yeah, I’m still around. Yeah, I know I haven’t posted regularly in what seems forever. And yeah, I know I keep using the school excuse. But it all reality, it was really a legitimate excused this time. Well, at least most of the time. I had about one week off between Q6 and Q7 a few weeks ago, and it was the first week where I completely and totally had nothing school related to be thinking about. Let me tell you, it was awesome. Makes me even more excited for August 1, 2010, aka – the morning I get my life back.

In other news, I completed the Pasadena Marathon Bike Tour last weekend. A few months ago, I gave myself this goal as a way to motivate myself to get into better shape. While round is a shape, I was getting sick of being “big man” when in pickup basketball games and decided that since my weight was closer to 300 lbs than it was 200 lbs and it gets harder to lose weight the older you get, I should do something about it. Again, school makes this difficult since I don’t have free time to spend hours in the gym. So I went with an exercise that I thought would be both effective and enjoyable: cycling. I had tried this method in the past, and it lasted for a few weeks before I gave it up, so I signed up for the marathon to give myself a goal to work toward. Combined with a handy iPhone app which allowed me to track calories, I finally found something that worked for me. Seeing the number on the scale get smaller every week was further reinforcement and motivation.

The marathon morning was unsurprisingly, raining. Not surprising because it was a Sunday in late February. Thankfully, the rain tapered off just as the race was getting underway, so we started under cloudy skies. Unfortunately, an evening of rain causes wet roads and ultimately causes water off my front tire to smack me in the face. Since I had experienced this before, I didn’t let it bother me too much. Matty J was also doing the race with me, so as we set off in the middle of the pack, he was pushing the tempo to keep me going. Aside from getting cursed and nearly killed when I spotted Liz and Cory at the first turn, the first half of the ride was uneventful. Then the hills came. Two straight miles of an incline. I had figured out how to change gears for hills a few months into my training, but two miles is quite a distance to be going uphill. About halfway through, I commented to Matt that I thought we were done with the hilly section. He informed me that there was more around the corner. Some evil jokester thought it would be funny to tease me with a block of flatland before continuing the punishment. After conquering the main hill, we encountered another master creation of the jokester with another hill at Mile 22, where I discovered a newfound respect for Lance Armstrong and anyone who bikes up the Swiss Alps for hundreds of miles on end. A sudden downpour at Mile 24 taught me that biking in the rain sucks ass, but it cleared right before the end so we were able to cruise across the finish line under the same cloudy skies we started with.

All in all, it was a fun experience. I finished in a personal best 1 hour 48 minutes, and I think I could have done even better if there hadn’t been as many hills. Although I finished the 26.2 miles on the saddle, I can see where people get a marathon high. I’ve already started looking for other rides to complete.