The resilience of the human body is an amazing thing to me. I'm getting back into the swing of riding almost everyday after only riding to work once a week for a few weeks in a row, due to weather issues and work schedules and social events and blah blah blah.... ( read : "i don't really have a good excuse for not riding...i just chose to drive because I like to sleep alot sometimes") and I was really surprised at how quickly i started to gain a little pudgyness in the old spare time area. I like muffin-top as much as the next little-bit-out-of-shape guy who likes to wear shirts that are a smidge too small for him, but when the shirt doesn't reach down to the belt area in the front, you got to get back to riding, or eating less or something! I love to eat though. and sometimes that's an issue too. I love food. I'm vegan, but i love eating. I love chinese food and I know I shouldn't eat the whole container they give you with the whole separate carton of white rice, but... I LOVE CHINESE FOOD!!! It tastes good and i don't want to stop eating it once I start! So I usually eat the whole thing. This could be related to addiction problems and I won't get into that here. But I love to eat. I love burritos, I love pizza, i love veggie dogs, i love french fries, i love pasta, i love avocado, i love pickles, i love peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Yep. But it was never an issue when i was riding 130-160ish miles a week. But now that I'm not putting in 12 hours or more or low impact cardio (cycling) per week, the eating is catching up with me. And my thighs just went from being about as ripped as I'd ever hoped they could be, to still big but a little flabby on the inside ( to use technical language). Yep our bodies are resilient.
So lately I've been getting back into commuting more and I've been really enjoying long recreational rides on my days off which is something I wasn't really that into when I didn't have a car. Because I rode so much from point A to point B, I didn't really want to just go ride for fun. It feels good to start riding with nothing but time on your hands and no specific place to be and just ride for a couple hours. It also feels good to ride to the Virginia Beach oceanfront and hang out for a half hour and eat a sandwich at your girlfriend's work and then ride back home. Riding has always been therapeutic for me but these days the recreational rides are more therapeutic than ever. A friend once told me that riding a fixed gear is supposed to be "zen like", I think only this week I realized that I agree with this. When he told me that, my reaction was more along the lines of : "no it's not because you have to pay attention or you'll stop pedaling and WRECK!", but now that it feels second nature to ride fixed and just let my legs spin with the crank rotation when I'm cruising, it DOES feel zen-like! I don't have to think about pedaling anymore, I just do. The bike wants to keep going and this makes it easier to pedal on a flat straight surface because the crank keeps spinning because the bike keeps moving and you just keep helping it spin. Unlike a freewheeled bike that you must constantly apply force to keep the bike moving, the fixed gear bike's drive train, once moving, wants to keep moving. I like riding fixed more than I ever thought I would. After crashing my fixed gear 1977 Raleigh Supercourse the VERY FIRST TIME i rode it home from Norfolk Bicycle Works, it took me awhile to actually get comfortable with riding this way. I kept forgetting that you can't stop pedaling, and I'd catch myself locking my legs up in a certain position after I get up to a certain speed, where I'd normally cruise on a bike with a freewheel/freehub and the crank would drag my legs around with it forcing me to keep pedaling and PAY ATTENTION!!! Anyone who loves bikes and hasn't ridden a fixed gear should have at least one fixed gear bicycle. I may have 2 soon!
Anywho........ So I feel like I've been failing at this blog lately since I haven't been posting as often as I'd like to, but i haven't had much to rant about or discuss since I've been driving to work so much more. But it's spring time, I should be riding more and should have plenty of blog material!!!
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