I'm going to break up the sections of this post with titles since it's so long and you don't need to read it all if you don't want.
Welcome all!
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3 Miles - good for you! That's about what I was able to do my first time out. Ouch! Somehow I don't remember those little hills being that tough when I was a kid. But, I've been seeing steady progress, as long as I push myself to go out and do it. Getting to work is getting easier (and that's the "tough" route for my week, complete with hills, a little off-road mountain-biking, some speed/road-biking, and a clock I'm racing against!)
I sobbed to myself the first couple of times out, as I was having asthma attacks, my butt hurt, my legs hurt, etc., but like the other gym work, I seem to be adapting. In fact, my weight-lifting & gym workout has improved significantly, even though I haven't been going as diligently!
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What my heart's been doing throughout all this:
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As well as pushing my butt through 55 miles (albeit it was a REALLY "easy" 55 miles, taking all the low-grade paved rail-trails and relatively flat path around the Charles River) I wore my heart-rate monitor for the first time (while biking). After the first 10 minutes, it's like, "No WONDER this is kicking my butt!" I was averaging a 145-160 heart rate! It seemed to level off at about 130-135 for the duration, only climbing to 150-160 when I did hills, but it's still a whole lot more than that puny 124 I couldn't get past on the treadmill!
I had to run like my butt was on fire on the elliptical to get it that high (145), and the elliptical seemed hard to me! My Polar watch said I burned over 3000 kcal's that day. While I can't take that at face value (as you need to replace a lot of it, or you'll have difficulties later while trying to repair muscle, etc.), it felt good to be able to tell people I rode 55 miles AND did 6.5 miles of parades the day after.
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Oh yeah, that diet part of diet & exercise:
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And I was able to "cheat" a little and have those steak-tips, strawberry shortcake, and some pizza. Today it was back to the chicken & salad, but it was nice to be able to eat some of the quasai-forbidden foods, because I knew I'd burned it off, and actually NEEDED some of it. Apparently doing that much biking you need to replace some of the sugar, because you spent most of your reserves, and you'll need the protein & minerals in red-meat for red blood cell & muscle repair. Pizza? Because I was really hungry, hadn't had pizza in a long time, and didn't feel like cooking after 2 parades.
I also think my body was craving salt, as well as sugar, from what I could tell. Everything tasted really salty to me, and for once, I didn't want diet soda - I wanted WATER. The diet soda was, "eh," and the water was like, "That's the stuff!" For as big a soda addict as I am, this was interesting to me.
Since I've been doing the eat right & exercise thing so diligently for the past 4.5 months now, it feels easy to slip back into the chicken & salad mode, and I actually have no guilt about the other stuff, because it was almost like taking medicine. Sure, I enjoyed it, but I was specifically looking for something with more calorie impact, so it was kind of "prescription" food. It was also eye-opening, because I realized, "You know, I used to eat like this every day, twice a day. But I was sitting at my desk all day, not burning 3000+ calories pushing myself up hills..."
Also... it all just TASTED better. I seriously think it's because my body was really craving the ingredients in it. I actually have a number of food allergies, and things that don't agree with me. But I've found that the harder I'm working out, and the more calorie deficit I produce, the better things agree with me. I can eat onions, eggs, etc. without any negative effects, if my body NEEDS the stuff in onions or eggs. If it's just surplus, my body rejects it right away. I just digest everything better when I'm working out hard.
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Clips & Cleats:
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The clips help, I think. It isn't a noticeable difference, but I'm averaging higher speeds, I have alternatives to climbing hills (whenever I'm spent and I have to do a hill, I just "pull" instead of push), and your feet just kind of feel... "right" in the same position all the time. I'll be searching for the clip, just pushing with my foot to get across an intersection until I find my way to the clip, and when it snaps it, it's like, "Yeah, that's the right place." Granted, this is assuming your bike, pedals and clips are set up correctly for your body. (I've been reading a lot, and following instructions for properly setting up the bike for "fit", and I think it's helped).
I'm finding most of the bicycling "gimmicks" seem to have a worthwhile purpose, although I still have a hard time accepting spandex pants.
I wear the underliner shorts with the padding (under my jeans), but I'm just not comfortable with my weight enough to go out in public wearing spandex tights. And as for shorts, I'm so black & blue up and down my legs from the pedals and stuff that I'm not all that interested in showing off those, either. (Not painful black & blue - just getting off and stopping at an intersection and bumping pedals or wheels, etc. from straddling the bike)
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--Janis
But I made it & I'm proud of myself ! I made a mini goal for my self. I hope to reach it by the end of May. 
There are lots of bike paths around here, and from May 1 to Labour Day there's a parkway circuit that's closed to cars on Sunday mornings. Of course that means getting up at a reasonable time... Three summers ago a friend talked me into a bike trip, about 300 k over 4 days; maybe we'll do something like that again this summer.
