Day 366

As much as I'd love to, I don't think it's deserved of me to classify myself as a serious cyclist. If anything, I'm an interloper, an outsider with little to no experience looking for a way in.

That being said, I'm intent on changing this. I'm 19, though I didn't actually start riding a bike until this past May, shortly after graduating high school. For college, I'm majoring in French at UT Knoxville, and as a result my excess scholarship money gives me approximately $3000 every semester in the form of a check. After getting my first check in late August, I went out to my favorite LBS (The Bike Zoo) and picked up a new Specialized Allez, threw on a rear rack and some lights, and had a commuting machine. My intent was originally to just have a nice bike that i could reliably use to get from one place to another (my house to college and back). The Allez was the cheapest road bike available, with the bike alone selling for $799+tax, all in all though, with gloves, helmet, rack, patch kit, bottle cage, and lights ended around $1200. With my Allez, I had no idea what I was getting into. Riding quickly became an obsession for me, and if I have nothing to do for any length of time, I'll be on my bike doing something. It seemed natural for me to think about becoming competitive, being that I am innately competitive, am decently fit, and am trying to find a way to maintain my fitness after ending a 13 year career as a dancer.

And that is how I've arrived here. I've been wanting to get more fit for a long time now, but especially since I started modeling. Since I was 5, I have been a dancer. I started doing simple modern dance at my elementary school, and quickly took to it, and began performing as soon as I could, around age 9. From there I stayed in the magnet program in my public school system to continue dancing, as well as joining outside companies to keep performing. One of my earliest teachers was an incredible man by the name of Mark Lamb. He now lives in New York and is apparently doing really awesome things on the scene there with his company Mark Lamb Dance. While dancing in his first company, Circle Modern, which he founded here in Knoxville, and while dancing in high school, I came to want nothing more than to dance for the rest of my life. Unfortunately I came to experience one of the most commonly expressed sentiment about college: it's too expensive. While being accepted as a dance major undergrad at Ohio State after their first audition, in addition to receiving TWELVE THOUSAND dollars in scholarships per year from OSU, it would still cost me ~$19,000/year to attend. Similar situations occurred in my attempts to attend various other schools, and it all stemmed from the fact that I was an out of state student, and therefore my coming into the state was heinous enough to warrant a $13,000/year fine from any school I attempted to attend. I'm still bitter about this.

And so, I was relegated to the life of a biology major who went to the state university in his home town. Unfortunately, I'm no good at chemistry or studying, so I became a french major. And now I need a way to stay fit. So here is where it begins, the day before a new year. Not only do I get to symbolically throw out all my shit from this past year that kept me from actually doing this, but it serves to add another year to my archives, which should enhance my appearance to future visitors. If you're reading this from the future, sorry about that!

My stats for today, December 31, around noon. (I'm 5'9")
Weight: 145
Food: Banana and bowl of oatmeal
Exercise: None yet
Planned Activity: 30 minute bike ride, some body resistance exercise (pilates, push ups, etc.) for 45 minutes. Then partying from around 6 until the wee hours of the new year.