After a 10 year hiatus, I have rediscovered my love for biking. However, I must admit, it was a scary, heart-pounding journey. Several weeks ago, my fellow intern, Maggie, asked if I wanted to bike down to the beach with her during our break. I agreed thinking ‘it can’t be that hard to pick back up.’ After all, I biked every single day with my brother around the neighborhood…back in the day.
Boy was I wrong. I could have crawled at a faster pace than my biking speed. Maggie was practically biking in circles around me! My body head to toe was sweating, my heart was bursting out of my chest, and my forearms were stiff from grasping onto the handles for dear life.
Since that day, I have biked several times each week—to the beach, to the grocery store, around Shipyard Plantation. I still can’t believe it took me so much time to get back on a bike, but I’m sure glad I did.
If you are thinking of getting back on a bike for fitness, environmental and/or recreational reasons, here are some things that helped me get back to the bike:
1) The steering took some time to get used to, but it came back to me after a couple bike rides. Having to bike on the twisty paths in Shipyard on my first try was quite an experience!
2) Making sure my seat was adjusted to the right height. For the first couple of weeks I had been biking with my seat too low and my legs had been pedaling an awkward motion. See http://www.bicycletutor.com/adjust-seat for tips.
3) Biking with a friend that knew where the paths started/ended, could watch the stop lights while my heart pounded away, and watched for oncoming traffic (!!). Plus, biking with another person encouraged me to keep pedaling along rather than turning around and giving up.
4) Practice, practice, practice. After that first day, I thought I’d never get back on a bike again. That was enough stress to last several weeks! But I didn’t let my horrible biking skills keep me away. It was challenging for me but I figured it would be an excellent way to cross train, enjoy the warm weather/outdoors, relieve stress, and exercise on the beach.
So, if you have been meaning to get back on your bike, I encourage you to go get it out of your garage/storage room and get pedaling! If anything, it’ll help you save some [expensive] gas!
You've come so far! You're doing great, even on a "big girl's bike!" I'm glad you were brave to try something new, you just never know what you may like!
ReplyDeleteAllie that's awesome! We bike when we are in Florida, but not here in New England. It's been raining constantly here this summer.
ReplyDeleteAnnie and I are working hard. I walked over 4 miles today. Tonight we started with a personal coach, a great guy we met several years ago in church, so I had a good workout in addition to the walking. Last week I went to Memphis, TN for a 3 day business meeting and did really well with the eating given we ate out every night. When I think of where we were before HHHI it is pretty scary. All my diabetes numbers are much better than before HHHI.
Oh yes, hi Maggie! Thanks for being so patient with Annie and I when we were at HHHI!!
Enjoy the rest of the summer and your internships!