Monday, February 6, 2012

Biking - Return to the bike path

With temps well into the upper 40s and sunny skies, I skipped the basement bike trainer workout today and got back outside. On the trainer, I can't even last quite half an hour before complete boredom overtakes me. But even if I ride a flat 14 miles on the bike path, that's an hour or so. I put in a longer period of effort, and it's infinitely more interesting.

I considered getting out the road bike today and doing something else, but stuck with the mountain bike that was already still in the car from last time out. It was windy again, but warmer than Saturday, and many more people were out walking. I only saw a couple of other bikers, one an older man plodding along, and the other a young woman in full Lycra from head to toe, in a rush. He gave a friendly wave, she didn't even look at me, which seems fairly stereotypical around here.

It was a nice day to be outside, and this was a good alternative to the other forms of exercise I've been deprived of by this snowless winter.

4 comments:

  1. I am enjoying reading your blog entries. Retirement sounds awesome!

    I hear you about the indoor workouts. I don't do much biking in the basement, but when I do I find that listening to a spinning workout on an ipod or speakers really helps to keep me engaged. It helps to have someone yelling at me, "pedal faster!" the whole time. I usually listen to some of the free ones out there:

    http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=spinning%20workout

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  2. Thanks - I'll take a look. As it is, I do play music of varying tempos, and that does help.

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  3. I totally agree with you as I also recently did a post about the same thing and I went to the battlefield to get out of the dreaded basement !!!!!!
    You can see my route here ---> http://bbqscotty.blogspot.com/2012/02/great-day-for-ride.html
    It is a great place for a ride. I haven't gotten to your bike path yet but intend to.

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    1. Scott, I'd be at the battlefield in a heartbeat with the current conditions if it weren't so far from home. Nice place to ride. I wear a polypro balaclava under my helmet in cold weather, EMS wind-stopper gloves with or without liners, and bread bags over my smart-wools inside my shoes. All in all, pretty effective at staying warm.

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