So why biking?

Many of you know me, and my running background. For those of you that don’t, here is a little recap.

I ran cross-country and track in high school. My event of preference was cross-country but I did OK in the 2-mile in track as well.

I went on to run cross-country and track in college. Again, cross-country was my favorite (mainly because of the close knit group of teammates). The cross-country teams I was part of during my 5 years of running had several good years, including a 2nd place finish in the NCAA Division II National Championship. That is my favorite running achievement, not because of what I did, but because of what the whole team achieved. In track I ran in the 5k and 10k events. My fastest time in the 5k was 14:36 and my fastest time in the 10k was 30:08 (do the math on that one). That 30:08 is my favorite individual achievement. I ran at the NCAA Division II track nationals that year, but I didn’t run as fast and it wasn’t quite as memorable.

So back to the topic at hand: “So why biking?”. Well, I guess it comes down to 2 things. The first is that I’m getting older, and my spontaneous “all or nothing” style of training seems to get me injured every time I try to start running again. The second is that I am lazy. Once I get home, I just want to hang back and relax with my family. I don’t usually want to change and go out for a run once I’ve settled in at home.

So biking to the rescue. Biking is low impact, so I was able to get going with only a few initial sore muscles, AND a sore posterior. I also started out by biking to and from work so that when I got home, I was already done exercising for the day. With a 13-17 mile ride each way (depending on the route) I got quite a good workout every time I commuted by bike. One year later (and a very cold winter of bike commuting) and I’m still on the bike.

Last summer I also started doing some mountain bike riding and this summer I am racing in a mountain bike cross-country series. So I get to do some cross-country racing on the bike as well.

So now I’m “Biker Bob” instead of “Runner Bob”. I can live with that.