The Mighty Bicycle
Healer of my heart | Restorer of my soul | Keeper of my flame
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I love this piece, Centering by Patrick Brady of Red Kite Prayer, one of my favorite cycling blogs. Centering is what cycling has done for me countless times throughout my life and still does. ~Susan
An excerpt from Centering by Patrick Brady:
“Three days into a three-week tour I had my first moment of reckoning. I was on a Western Montana highway with mountains to my right and little other than blacktop before me. This was my first big chance to go deep on the thing I loved doing—riding my bike. However, as I was buffeted by the backwash from a passing semi, I was thrust upon the spiky end of a realization.
There were hundreds of miles between each of my big destinations. I was going to be pedaling a long damn time.
Going for a ride had always meant getting on my bike and heading to some destination; home, my apartment, work. A bike ride started in a familiar place, went someplace interesting and then returned to a familiar place. To this point in my life those adventures had been contained within a single arc of the sun. But now I was confronting the idea that I wouldn’t reach either the end of an adventure or my destination before the sun set.
I didn’t appreciate that I’d put myself to a kind of test. For days, I would wake, break camp, and then spend the day riding, only to arrive at another campground, with my destination closer only in my intellect. To my eye, I was still nowhere.
I was going to find out just how much I liked riding a bike. But what is riding a bike? Is it the going someplace? Is it what you see on a ride? Is it the fun you had in riding the particular terrain? That question eluded me, didn’t compute. I didn’t know enough to ask it.
When was it I finally understood that cycling is the act of pedaling a bicycle and pointing it in a direction, no more, and certainly not less?
It was a day in France, on an Alpine climb longer than many movies when I began to understand. I looked down at my legs and watch the circles my knees traced, my feet going round and round with the pedals.
This is what cycling is.” —Read more of Red Kite Prayer’s Centering here
Cycling doesn’t get any better than it is in the Fall. Great temperatures, calm wind and color galore. Fall color, leaves, falling around you as you pedal. October days, northeast Ohio, where I now live.
Greetings fellow bike fiends!
It has been a while since I last posted, but I still ride and still love cycling – blogging evidently – not so much.
Since it has been a while, I thought an update might be in order.
2015 Goals ~ First off, as far as my previously posted cycling mileage goal for 2015, I exceeded it. In the past that used to happen frequently, but in the last few years I have typically missed the mark. My 2015 cycling goal was 3,000 miles, I finished the year with 3,187. Nothing grand for many cyclists, but for me it was an achievement I was proud of, mainly because of how I did it, which I’ll explain in a bit.
As you might recall from my posts last year, I decided to continue April’s #30daysofbiking through the rest of 2015 with a #RideEveryDay goal. To that end, except for 12 days, I managed to ride every day from April 1 – December 31, 2015.
Going in I knew I likely wouldn’t be able to ride every single day – sometimes it just isn’t possible. There were days while traveling when I didn’t have one of my bikes so I had to get creative with how I could get my hands on one to keep the streak intact – anything short of stealing. So I utilized bike share, test rides and borrowed a bike from someone while traveling once for a quick ride.
Most importantly for me, riding every day changed the way I ride. I used bikes much more for transportation than I ever had previously – a big win. I also took shorter, slower rides which I found renewed my enthusiasm and love for cycling. No gadgets, no lycra on some rides – just me pedaling for the joy – and the goal of riding every day. Cycling had become too much about the miles, average speed and the like. Working a bike ride into my daily activity made me shift my focus from doing training rides to using cycling to get places, for recreation or stress relief or just to enjoy a beautiful day.
2016 Goals ~ When 2016 rolled around I wasn’t sure if I would set another goal to ride every day or wait until April’s #30daysofbiking and try to ride daily the remainder of the year – or neither.
As it turned out several illnesses over the winter made my decision for me.
Although I did bike some in January, February and March, more days than not I didn’t. I managed to ride every day in April, and the first part of May but then I missed a day, than another and so decided 2016 would be different with a change of focus.
With no daily goal of riding I have found more time for long walks, a few over 10 miles, the longest has been just over 15. I’ve also implemented daily weight training and yoga/stretching. Mixing it up basically and cycling is just a part of the mix.
Intermittent Fasting ~ Another part of the mix has been to implement Intermittent Fasting (IF). I utilize the 16/8 IF schedule 7 days a week. Basically I skip breakfast – black coffee only – and eat my first meal around noon or so. Dinner is around 7pm than nothing after 8pm until at least noon the next day – 16 hours of fasting.
Google Intermittent Fasting if you’re interested, there are some great resources on the web, one of which you can find here.
I love it. It’s easy, you don’t get hungry and if you want to turn into a fat-burning-beast, exercising during that fasting window is the way to do it. I’ve lost weight, but more than that I’m gaining muscle, getting leaner, from burning fat – win/win. Intermittent Fasting has become popular in the last few years and there are a number of ways to approach it, you likely can find something that will work for your lifestyle.
Primal Blueprint ~ Another change I’ve made is to follow the Primal Blueprint approach to food and exercise. You may not have heard of Mark Sisson but he’s a goldmine of nutrition and fitness information. You can find him and his Primal Blueprint at Mark’s Daily Apple website.
If you are familiar with Paleo diet, Primal is basically Paleo with a heart. The basic rule is you eat real food, not processed food – like meat, poultry, seafood, fruits and vegetables and some dairy. Unfortunately for a sweet lover like myself, chocolate cake doesn’t fall in the realm of “real food” but you can still enjoy wine, dark chocolate and the occasional indulgence – including chocolate cake.
The Primal method allows for an 80/20 adherence, mine is more like 90/10 or 95/5. I was very strict the first 6 weeks or so. For the most part I eat what I want, and certainly eat enough where I am satisfied. If it didn’t work well for me I wouldn’t do it. It doesn’t feel like a “diet”, you don’t go hungry and you eat good food. You do cook more and eating out requires a little thought and planning, but there are huge payoffs.
The surprising thing too has been 1) how easy it is to do, 2) how easy (fast) it is to lose weight, 3) how much more energy and focus I have.
Normally I don’t push or write about my lifestyle choices – sans cycling obviously – but I’m making an exception for Primal and IF because it works so well and is so simple. It seems like one of those things that’s too good to be true, and too good not to share.
If you are interested, check out the links above and like with everything else, google. Does anyone practice Intermittent Fasting or the Primal/Paleo way of eating? Feel free to comment below, I’d like to know your thoughts/experiences.
We’ve spent late September in Massachusetts the past two years. Last year Cape Cod, this year the North Shore/Cape Ann area. Both are beautiful, both are great places to cycle.
If you are interested in cycling tours or touring on your own in the North Shore area or even the greater New England area, I recommend checking out Bike New England: http://bikenewengland.com. It is quite the website with suggested routes, maps and cue sheets for all the areas mentioned. The actual tour we were on was through Road Scholar and is offered twice a year.
This was a lower mileage tour than those we have done in the past and I found I enjoyed the lower miles as well as higher mileage tours. With fewer miles there was more time and tendency to see the sights in the towns we stayed – Ipswich and Newburyport, MA. Quaint towns with tons of history, restaurants with great seafood and plenty to see and do off the bike.
Like our other bike tours, we rode with a wonderful group of people, participants and guides alike. There was a mix of ages and cycling experience. but we meshed together well; truly a delightful group of people. The group of 14 usually broke into smaller groups, with at least one guide riding with each. All 4 of the guides were terrific and took very good care of us – my thanks to Gordon, Paula, Barbara and Jimmy. Unlike all our previous tours, no one drove a support van yet it worked out great. It wasn’t needed during our tour, we did out and back rides from both locations. If someone had needed a lift back, I’m sure one would have been provided.
In addition to riding in the North Shore/Cape Ann area we spent several days in Boston beforehand and had a chance to ride there also. First off we did the Boston City View Tour with Urban AdvenTours – highly recommend them. The guides took great care as they navigated us through the streets of Boston, while providing a very informative tour of Boston’s historical sites and neighborhoods. A wonderful way to see Boston. In addition we did several walking tours, but the bike tour was our favorite.
Boston’s Urban AdvenTours City View Tour
Last, but not least, we used Boston’s bike share – Hubway. We bought a 72 hour pass so we could have the flexibility to ride each day if we chose AND allow me to meet my “ride every day” goal. The most fun was when we decided to hop on and ride back to our hotel after eating a huge meal including a bottle of wine at Al Dente in the North End. We ended up in the middle of Chinatown on Saturday night – traffic jam deluxe! What a memorable ride that was – if only I’d had a GoPro to catch the whole thing on video!
Massachusetts North Shore was a fantastic experience and a beautiful place to ride.
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