It's ( Not ) Like Riding a Bike

[21C]

Having grown soft and flabby through a lack of exercise, I decided to do something about it by buying a bike and trying to get into shape. How hard could it be? I used to ride for hours on end as a kid so it should be . . . like riding a bike.

Problem 1 - it was like 90 degrees when I went out. Not a good idea when you haven't been on a bike for years.

Problem 2 - most of the streets around my place are quite hilly. Not big hills but they appeared gigantic by the end of the ride.

Problem 3 - the bike has 18 speeds. I know the principle behind choosing the right gear for the right terrain but putting it into practice was another thing all together. I'd come to a small slope and knew I had to change down ( or is that change up? ) a gear to maintain my pedalling speed but I'd end up selecting the wrong gear and come to a grinding halt.

My next attempt will be on a dedicated bike track that surrounds a nearby lake. It is dead flat and I can just pedal without worrying about gear changing. The only problem is that I need to drive to get there and my bike doesn't fit in my sedan. I'm going to have to borrow my wife's car to get there.

My plan is/was to eventually ride to work. There is a bike track that goes right up to the school I work at but the problem is that it is all downhill to get there but the return trip would kill me. I'm trying to work out a way that I can ride to work but drive home later.

Anybody else had any luck getting on the bike again after a long layoff?

[21C]

What's up with the ( lack of ) formatting? That was NOT written as a single paragraph!

[kingfc22]

My formatting was messed up for the first 5-10 minutes I visited the board since the upgrade.

Then all of a sudden it worked like normal.

[21C]

Yep, waiting seemed to do the trick. My first attempt looked just like the original post but it works fine now.

[Pyser]

wow, he threadjacked himself.

[Marc Vaughan]

I've never understood the need for 18 gears on a bike, my old bikes as a kid had a maximum of around 4 and that was more than enough.

These days all bikes seem to have around 5-10 times that number of gears and all that happens is that you ignore them and jump up and down in large numbers .... anyone elaborate on why more is better for me?

[IwasHere]

If you have some extra change lying around, buy yourself a bike with an automatic transmission.

My 14 speed bycycle shifts gears all by itself. Just one less hassle if you ask me.

[Desnudo]

Problems 1-3 = the same thing. You are out of shape. The only solution is to pace yourself until you get back into shape.

[21C]

If I don't do something straight away ( yard work, cleaning the pool, etc. etc. ) then I often talk myself out of it. I had to get on that bike today or I'd find some reason to put it off.

I now know what I should have done but, at the time, I just convinced myself I'd be OK. 'It wasn't that hot', 'That hill isn't so big', 'My heart isn't racing that fast'.

[Rockstar]

Theres a guy who I work with who told me a story from a couple of years ago. He worked in an office building and decided to take doughnuts to his coworkers. He had just started an exercise routine and took the stairs to the tenth floor. At about the sixth floor he was go gassed that he sat down on the steps and ripped into the doughnuts. He ate all 12 of them and swore off exercise forever.

[hoopsguy]

My wife and I purchased bikes last fall (late September, I think), with the intention of getting the bikes when the pricing was starting to go down, but would still have some time last year to ride them before it got too cold. The plan was/is to really get a lot of riding time in this year, but to at least get a start last year.

We found that we definitely were not in good bike shape after 20 year layoffs. For us, the cold was an issue since it was late fall - temps under 50 + wind made the experience pretty uncomfortable. And hills certainly had an impact on us as well; Illinois isn't full of them, but when we found them they did kick our butts. We gradually built up to longer rides, going from the 2-3 mile range up to the 5-7 mile range with a little tougher terrain. And I expect that we'll continue to make progress on this in 2006 (today will be my first day riding, but she has to work) after shaking off the rust on the first couple of rides.

As far as the gears, I started to get the hang of it after a few rides but I certainly don't use the full range of 15 speeds available to me. Most of the time I don't find myself shifting more than 1-2 gears at a time so my effective range of gears is at most 7 of the 15 available.

Long story short, we are trying the same thing as you. And our initial "toe-in-water" experience was pretty fun, even if we were not terribly good at it and saw many of the same challenges you have.

[21C]

I had a much better experience today.

Drove the bike down to the track at the lake where the road was flatter and the day was a lot cooler than the last time. There were a couple of small hilly bits that allowed me to test out the whole gear changing routine. The only minor gripe I had was that I didn't realize I had the wind at my back when I rode in one direction which meant I had to ride into it on the way back.

I certainly feel a lot better about future rides after that.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Originally Posted by Marc Vaughan

I've never understood the need for 18 gears on a bike, my old bikes as a kid had a maximum of around 4 and that was more than enough.

These days all bikes seem to have around 5-10 times that number of gears and all that happens is that you ignore them and jump up and down in large numbers .... anyone elaborate on why more is better for me?

Serious cyclists try to maintain a specific number of pedal revolutions per minute (say 90 cycles/minute), and a wide range of gears is essential for this.

[21C]

Well, I finally built up enough stamina to do the whole ride to work. I'd actually done a couple of practice rides first to see how long it would take. It wasn't too bad except for the huge hill close to my place. Once I was past that, it was pretty smooth.

I have to say that I've been really enjoying the whole bike experience and would highly recommend it to anyone else. I sort of feel like I did a couple of years ago when I really got into text simming. I'm almost ho-hum about text sims now but I find myself "thinking" about riding at odd times - like when I'm in the car and I wonder if I'd be able to handle the hill I'm driving up.

I even bought a bike computer ( simple one for speed and distance ) and a pair of bike shorts. The bike shorts are a godsend since some early rides saw me shifting around all the time to avoid the "ring of fire".

The only thing I'm going to hate is riding into my school and putting up with all of the smartass comments from the students.

[Swaggs]

Originally Posted by 21C

I even bought a pair of bike shorts. The bike shorts are a godsend since some early rides saw me shifting around all the time to avoid the "ring of fire".

No pix pls, k thnx