Biking to work

My consulting business has gotten very busy this month, which is great. And I think some of the clients I'm working with have potential to be longer term. My partnership is working out well too. We put in a bid for a project and we won it, so now we're knuckling down to do the work.

All this is great, but it's meant a lot less free time. Such is the life of a freelancer, of course. But when you're a busy professional and a mom, finding time for workouts gets harder and harder when your day life gets busier (and when you have to go back to the computer after the kids are in bed too!). So my triathlon training suffered a bit, until the sun came out.

We've had a lot of yucky weather in Vancouver this Spring, with lots of rain, not much sun, and here it is May but temps are still below 'seasonal', meaning the heat is still on, we're all wearing jackets and my son's t-ball games are being played without sunshine. Still there are some sunny moments, and they inspired me.

For the past few weeks, whenever I have a meeting within about 10 km of my home, I've biked. This may not seem like a big deal, but I live on a hill, in a hilly city, and there's a lot of uphill I have to bike through to get anywhere in any direction, especially returning home. But the city is also under siege by construction, so biking isn't really taking me much longer than busing or driving. And it gets my workouts in during the workday.

The best part is my wardrobe, which I believe I now have down http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifto a science. I don't want to take meetings in my biking tights, so I bring a change of clothes, but I 'change' in public. I wear 3/4 length lights and a black tank top under my biking shirt/jacket. When I get there, I change my runners for nice flats, pull a long skirt over my tights, take my biking shirt off (still wearing the tank -- see I'm never undressed!), and put on a nice top over my tank top. And voila, you'd never know I was on a bike. And since most of my meetings are downhill from me, I don't arrive too sweaty.

Last week I had a meeting at City Hall, which is on a busy street. I arrived, locked my bike on the rack right in front of the building, and proceeded to change. A driver who was sat at a red light on the street before me made wolf whistles as I changed. And frankly, I loved it!

But today's downtown meeting has just been canceled, so I guess I'll have to go biking sometime before I serve my kids dinner. Still gotta pound out those miles -- I mean kilometres.