Upcoming bike trip

Hey, you know what REALLY gets your metabolism going? Riding your bike 70-80 miles in one day, resting, and repeating 3 times.

That's not quite what's going to happen this year. But last year, I rode my bike down to my dad's in the next major city down the valley, hung out for a weekend, then continued on to the college town where I went to school my first year. I revisited my old campus, saw a few friends, and turned around, using my dad's as a pit stop again. I weighed about what I do now, although I was probably in slightly better general shape. I ate around 1200 calories worth of energy bars each day of riding, plus meals. So I ate, in total, probably 3000-4000 calories a day, which is obviously a ton, but stick the ride into a few calorie calculators, add BMR, and you'll see it's somewhere between just-breaking-even and huge-deficit-anyway.

But I didn't say it shaved the pounds off while I was riding, I said it gets your metabolism going. The upshot of all this is that two weeks, 3 half-gallons of ice cream, and very little running later I was STILL slimming down. Not bad at all.

This year I'm doing another bike trip, this is for sure. Unfortunately, I don't have 9 consecutive days before school starts to ride down the valley like I did before. Instead I'm going with my boyfriend on a 4 day trip - the plan is to leave next Thursday - which will probably be 50 miles out, 2 days of recovery/hanging out, and 50 miles back. I won't restrict the day before or while I'm on the trip, although I will still record and count calories, and I'll probably eat as much of a pint of ice cream as I want the night we return. But afterward, I won't eat 3 half-gallons of ice cream to myself in 2 weeks and sit around. Instead I'll go straight back to the plan I've been following - strength training, running, and restricting. That should really give this thing a kick.