I am now in the posession of some nice bike short tan lines...

Or in my case, sunburn lines.

The irony is that this morning I did my usual taunting of my roommate after she came back from tanning about how she is going to get cancer.

And then because it was cool and overcast, I totally forgot sunscreen and came back with some nice lines on my legs and arms after my bike ride.

I am a bridesmaid in a friend from junior high's wedding in September. Between all the running and biking I need to do this summer and the field work on top of that, I am probably going to ruin her wedding photos with some funky tan lines in this dress:One of my undergrads suggested I start wearing a tube top during all our field work. Yeah, that would be awesome. Unfortunately I have to wear a life preserver when out on the boat, so even a tube top wouldn't save me.

My roommate thinks I should spray tan. But I am petrified of turning orange, since I have never done such a thing.

But to quote my roommate "Well, an orange tan would be better than your pasty white legs in that black dress."

We believe in brutal honesty in our household.

Anyways, I think the world is in a sorry state when a fake orange tan is considered to look better than my natural white skin color.

Well, if I keep forgetting the sunscreen, I may solve this problem on my own.

Anyways, today I accidentally went on a 40 mile bike ride. I intended to do 30 but I didn't really have a set route mapped out, I was just doing loops around town. And then I went out on one road to finish off the distance, got to where I needed to go to but by then all the grid roads were dirt (in the midwest, the entire countryside is laid out in one mile by one mile grids - as a New Englander this is totally foreign to me but it means you can never get lost). I refuse to backtrack, so I decided to take the next paved road, even though it went south (I was southwest of home, but figured I could take a road east back to town that was different than the one I was on). Well the next road east wasn't for 4 miles. I was beat by the time I got home and fell asleep on the couch, still in my bike shorts.

My previous longest ride ever was 28 miles. I am pretty sure 12 miles is a little too much to jump up by (only a 45% increase!). My average speed was just over 15 mph, but you know what? I'll take that. I've had a hard time getting the longer rides in. Going out for 15-20 mile rides hasn't been a problem, but last time I checked, an Olympic distance is 25 miles, so that ain't gonna cut it. And! My bike seat got moved forward and things are a little less painful. Although I think I might be compromising some on form since my back was sore. But that just could be because I had never ridden that long before.

Oh and since I totally believe in overloading posts with non-sequiturs, I was playing with the GRR pace calculator and they estimate (given our individual paces for each leg) that it will take us 29 hours. We did the Wild West Relay in 28:38. We have a bit of a different cast of characters, but our average pace is only about 30 seconds slower than last year and this race is not over the Continental Divide and has oxygen galore. It is also 2 miles longer. But I still think we can totally beat our time from last year. We also finished in the top half of our division last year - from last year's GRR results that dividing line was 29:06, so I think we can totally do that at least. Of course, this is all for fun, but goals are good too, right? We could also just go for one of the other awards of Best Decorated Vehicle, Best Team Name (if the WWR had this, I bet we could have won this category given how many people commented on our team name), Overall Favorite Team (be nice to the other teams!) or Best Team Costume. Hmmm, not so sure about running in costume!