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Monday, July 28, 2008

Bicycling your way to fitness

After many years of not getting on a bicycle I decided to start up biking again as a way to get back into shape. I cleaned off my dusty 21 speed mountain bike (bought at WalMart a few years back) and did some maintenance on it.

About 2 weeks ago my daughter and I went on a local bike ride that I thought would be an easy start to my bike riding fitness routine again - boy was I wrong. The route was from our drive way and took a 6 mile loop back to our driveway. We live on a country road so the traffic would be very light. The loop had some small hills, or so I thought they were small until I was biking them. Those hills turned into steep mountain passes as I was going up them. My daughter was way ahead of me and kept looking back at her struggling mother who was almost dying. I found out that I was extremely out of shape. The trip took just about an hour when it should have taken half that time. After I got home I was hurting and aching for 3 days.

Well I finally got up the nerve to try it again. This time it was a flatter route and only 2 hills. This trip was about 2 miles shorter and much less of a workout but I did it without any lasting pain. That trip was done on Sunday morning and here it is Monday morning and I feel great. The muscles in my upper abdomen feel tighter and my thigh muscles are pulling my fat in. My clothes are now fitting better. This time I plan on going biking at least 2X a week for starters.

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