So I've been keeping at it.

I increased my regular route to a 13 mile, 800ft elevation loop. There's a mile long hill on that one that totally killed me the first time I tried it, but now I can do it without stopping. I could still use lower gearing, though. The first time I did that loop, it took me 57 minutes. Knocked down the time to 51 minutes last time I did it. When I can knock the time down to 45 minutes, I'll increase the distance again.

Today I didn't have a lot of time, so I did my shorter 8 mile loop. Haven't done that one in a few weeks. I beat my best time by 3 minutes and finished it in 29 minutes and 55 seconds. Average speed of 16.56mph! Yay! Not bad considering the first time I did it two months ago it took me 52 minutes at about 9mph.

Once I can average 20mph, I'll start riding with other people.

The weight has been coming off slowly. I'm down about 9lbs from when I started two months ago. Not sure if that's a good pace or if I should do something different with the diet. What do you guys think?