Wait, what?

So yesterday, I went to this meeting at work. Mostly because, hey, look, free lunch. One hour and one sandwich later, I had signed my name on the dotted line and committed to doing a 100-mile bike ride for charity. This, despite the fact that I am not a bike rider.

Like, at all. Not since I was about 12 years old.

"I don't even own a bike," I hedged, only to be informed that it doesn't matter, don't let that stand in my way.

"But I seriously haven't gone on a bike ride since sometime before puberty," I clarified, speaking slowly and enunciating clearly, so there would be no confusion among these charity-athletics gurus as to my extreme lack of ability and general level of sloth. Yet this statement fazed exactly no one, except my fellow sandwich-lovers (who, it must be said, looked way more fit than me. At least the vast majority of them looked like runners and swimmers and whatnot. People who look like they're a few months training away from marathon material. By contrast, I have the approximate physique of a butternut squash. A remarkably stout squash. With legs. And hair. Great hair, but I mean still - great hair will not carry you 100 miles on a bike, whether you own that bike or not, and I do not, and OH MY GOD WHAT DID I SIGN UP FOR. I am NOT kidding about looking like a butternut squash, okay, and I am talking about, like: imagine a butternut squash who swallowed a Christmas ham. All I'm saying is: Oh my dear sweet lord, help me. And that's the end of this parenthetical aside. For now.)

But I've been really wanting to get into bike-riding, you see, and I somehow keep putting it off. I've always thought it would be great to commute by bike, riding down the lake shore path, avoiding the urine-fresh aroma of the red line train every day. But as aforementioned, I do not own a bike. So I just keep thinking I'll do it, allowing it to languish in the misty dim Forest Of Thought instead of releasing it into the Land Of Action. So in the crucial moment, I impulsively figured - hey, good way to kick-start that bike-to-work plan, and fight cancer! And I signed the paper.

And now I am sitting here, distantly aware that I'll start training in less than a month, mentally preparing myself to hit up every last human I encounter to donate to the cause, seeing my boss's half-laughing half-horrified face when I told her I was doing this nutty thing ("Why?!?!!" she asked, with just the right amount of incredulous in the tone), getting excited at the idea of actually accomplishing it, and just generally stunned. I mean, what did I do? Excuse me, um, what? Huh? (Poleaxed is a great word, and appropriate for moments like these.) I suppose it'll start sinking in sometime after I get into training? But for now, I'm just all like "Whoa. I am going to do that. Me, my fat ass, my not-exactly-young bones, my scant muscles, and my non-existent bike: WE ARE GOING TO DO THAT." (then a tiny voice answers: "wait, for real? are we?")

It's about 50 different kinds of awesome, don't even try to deny it. YAY ME. (I think.)

Details:

The Cause: Leukemia & Lymphoma Society
My Fundraising Goal: $5,000
My Team: AHA through Team In Training
Training Starts: January 7, 2012
The Big Day: June 3, 2012