I’m down to a little under an hour and 16 mile down and back on the bike, with only 3/4 miles around cars. I can’t see over my left shoulder any more.
At my peak, I did 2 years of 400+ miles every week. I worked at a bike shop that was 33 miles away and rode that every day, six days a week. Saturdays, I rode in and lead out a group ride for 40-60 miles, then rode home. I raced around 1 Sunday a month.
I started much smaller and kept getting jobs that were further and further from home, but kept commuting and adjusting okay. It started to get expensive to maintain bikes, so I started looking for a bike shop to work at. The actual route was just 26 miles by the shortest roads, but I quickly learned to connect all the dedicated bike paths as much as possible.
It is kinda odd riding like that. Food is not a real choice. You need a lot of calories and eating bad is not an option. I still did it some for awhile, but getting sick a dozen times and the magnitude of consequences is enough to change anyone’s habits. The human stomach shuts down almost entirely to divert blood flow to muscles during long endurance activities. So most of the problems are not actually on the bike but after. However a 1.5 hour commute will quickly turn into a 2+ hour slough without caloric balance.
The eating habits I learned back then stuck well. Bad foods sicken me, not in any emotional or dogmatic sense, they actually make me feel ill out of the memories of what I felt like in the past.
I’m down to a little under an hour and 16 mile down and back on the bike, with only 3/4 miles around cars. I can’t see over my left shoulder any more.
At my peak, I did 2 years of 400+ miles every week. I worked at a bike shop that was 33 miles away and rode that every day, six days a week. Saturdays, I rode in and lead out a group ride for 40-60 miles, then rode home. I raced around 1 Sunday a month.
I started much smaller and kept getting jobs that were further and further from home, but kept commuting and adjusting okay. It started to get expensive to maintain bikes, so I started looking for a bike shop to work at. The actual route was just 26 miles by the shortest roads, but I quickly learned to connect all the dedicated bike paths as much as possible.
It is kinda odd riding like that. Food is not a real choice. You need a lot of calories and eating bad is not an option. I still did it some for awhile, but getting sick a dozen times and the magnitude of consequences is enough to change anyone’s habits. The human stomach shuts down almost entirely to divert blood flow to muscles during long endurance activities. So most of the problems are not actually on the bike but after. However a 1.5 hour commute will quickly turn into a 2+ hour slough without caloric balance.
The eating habits I learned back then stuck well. Bad foods sicken me, not in any emotional or dogmatic sense, they actually make me feel ill out of the memories of what I felt like in the past.