When I was in college in the early '00s I spent a lot of time bicycling. I lived off campus but worked on campus and couldn't afford a parking pass so my bicycle was my daily commuter; in Kansas this meant riding in all sorts of weather, and of course I grew to detest winters when I still had to be at work at 05:30 and didn't get home until 21:30 or so. On nice non-winter weekends, however, I loved doing a bit of singletrack riding and it was not unusual for me to clock 20-30 miles in the morning on my POS Wal-Mart bike. I thoroughly enjoyed this.
However, I fell out of the habit when I moved to Korea and even when I returned to the US in the late aughts I just never quite got back into bicycling. I had a hand-me-down bike a friend gave me but it was too small and I just didn't ride much.
Earlier this year I decided that was enough of that so I went to REI and bought a Cannondale Quick CX 3. It's nothing fancy, just an 8-speed hybrid bike, but it fits me well and does what I want: I can ride on the multi-use pathways near my home out here in the Phoenix area and I can also comfortably (enough) ride on a lot of the gravel canal embankments.
Over recent months (keeping in mind that summers here are absolutely brutal) I've been ticking away at increasing mileage. At first a 6- or 8-mile ride was pretty long for me: I just wasn't used to being in the saddle. That quickly segued into 10-mile and 14-mile rides.
Two weeks ago I ticked off my first 20-mile ride. Then last week it was a 26-mile ride. This morning was a solid 32 miles, but I was feeling froggy this afternoon and so knocked out another 18 for a daily total of 50.
Y'all who have multiple bicycles and ride all the time? I get it. This -- at least when the weather is nice -- is pretty fun!
In reply to brandonsmash :
Congrats for getting back on the saddle, you're making great progress.
I'd slowly gotten away from cycling & found myself in 2021 feeling miserable & horribly out of shape - I couldn't even make it around the block. The first couple years were really difficult, but last spring I finally started feeling a little progress & fortunately it's continued through this year too.
The one bit of advice I'd give you is just keep riding for fun & don't focus too much on goals. My tolerance for both heat & cold on my rides has increased with miles & fitness gains, so don't worry about how quickly or slowly you feel you're progressing.
One thing that's going to be a challenge is that once I take up a pastime I tend to get SUPER focused on it, often to my detriment. I'd like that to not happen with bicycling.
To your point about heat/cold tolerance, Pete: If I get too monomaniacal I can see myself trying to crank out 80-mile days in 118F heat and getting really burned out.
In reply to brandonsmash :
It's good to be focused, but if it gets to the point where it's not fun, that's detrimental. I took all of the computers off of my bikes a few years ago when I stopped racing, and decided I was going to ride when and where I wanted, at whatever speed I wanted. When you're dreading the interval workout for the evening before you even start, that's when it's not fun anymore.
If you can find a way to make it social, or make it about adventure goals, that'll help. Friends to ride with? Cool destinations or scenery to explore? That's fun.
Good points there - I'd love to be able to ride with friends. Right now it's just me out spinning solo.
Another part of this is that I still want to remain an international elite-level powerlifter (I'm officially retired but still train and maintain strength), capable strongman / Highland competitor if I so choose, and also enjoy rock climbing. Yes, my chosen sports are often at odds with each other. The fallout from this is that burning a lot of calories on a bicycle makes it hard to keep the strength I want for strongman, and the muscle I need for PL/SM is contraindicated to rock climbing.
*shrug emoji*
In reply to brandonsmash :
It sounds to me like you should start your own triathlon variant that includes all-3 of those disciplines.
