I don't generally exercise, but when I travel with my co-worker, she likes to use the hotel gym (among our sightseeing walks around the cities that can last hours). Both in Chicago and in Anaheim I accompanied her to the gym and spent time on the elliptical or the bike. I love the bike, the one with the bucket type seat. I would put it on random and set the level to like 8 or 9 and ride for approx 45 minutes. I would sweat and was exhausted, but it felt great. I wondered why I didn't ride my own bike.
I bought my bike about 9 years ago or so and only used it a handful of times...so few times that my tires still have the threads on them. I bought the bike because about 9 years ago I participated in a Bike Vermont tour; they said mountain bike tires were not idea for road biking - as you have to exert more energy. Then two years ago I decide to bike in my apartment so I bought a trainer to convert my bike into a stationary bike. Unfortunately with the big mountain bike wheels this was really noisy and difficult, so I bought a whole new back wheel using a street tire, and it worked great the three weeks I used it. My bike then sat in the apartment for a year then I moved it to the garage for a year where it was until this past weekend when I decided to bike the Bronx River Parkway. On Friday I decided to get a front matching street tire...holy toledo that wheel was $87.50. I didn't know it would be that much. I found a neighbor to do the ride with me. To prepare all I did was attempted to change my wheels - and realized I was not strong enough to take the brake off my back wheel then I attempted to put my bike rack on the car - and had a hard time with that too. Thank goodness my neighbors helped with the rack- but I kept the mountain tires on.
Anyway - we parked in North White Plains, so that added two - three extra miles to the 13.1 miles round trip from the County Center in White Plains to Yonkers. I thought with all the stationary biking I did last weekend I would have been warmed up...yeah, not so much. The small hills I found a little difficult at times. I only brought one water bottle with me (since my bike only has one bottle holder and I didn't bring a bag) and I tried to conserve my water - which was hard since it was also a bit warm and sunny. I initially was thinking I wouldn't do the whole thing...but the southern part was very flat and easy and we didn't even realize we hit the end so quickly. When we got to the end - it was good timing since my butt was so sore. We took a little break and got ice cream from the truck and then headed back north. We were out for about an hour and fourty-five minutes...but that did include a good 15 minute break and a few small breaks....and my out of shape body that at times I was only peddling about 8mph. Clearly this is way longer than the stationary bike when I can bike the same distance in 45 minutes or less. When I do this again...I will be sure to bring more water with me and have someone change out my back tire.
I really enjoyed this type of outing...and want to note that my future husband will need to be a LITTLE adventurous/outdoorsy/like to do these things with me. Oh and be strong enough to fix my bike and put on the rack.
No comments:
Post a Comment