2012 Cycling Recap

I wanted to do a quick recap of my cycling efforts in 2012 before I forget about the details.

For those of you who don't know, I decided to take up the hobby/sport of cycling last year.

I did this for a few reasons:

1. I have always liked riding bikes, why not take it up a notch? Also, it sounded fun!
2. My Dad had recently taken up this sport, had a lot of fun doing it, and saw pretty impressive health results from doing it.
3. I wanted to be healthier, but I was terrible at running and I had a bum knee.

Side note about the bum knee. In the fall before I got married, I, like many people, decided I should attempt to get in shape before the wedding/honeymoon. After making very little progress under my own direction, I enrolled in one of those boot camp style group workout programs. One day, our exercise was stair running. Around flight 85 of 100,  I injured (or maybe reinjuried? long story....) my knee. Running on my knee became very unpleasant after that. Outside of that injury, I thoroughly enjoyed the bootcamp program. It was the first time I truly saw myself as being able to be athletic in any sense and is realistically what jump started me to be more physically fit.

First things first, to cycle, one must have a cycle. I used my skills of cheapskatery thriftiness to procure a fantastically orange road bike on craigslist (as seen below).

As I mentioned in this previous blog post, I got a bit obsessive with my orange/white color scheme. Orange Jerseys? Check!, Orange Water bottles? Check!, Orange Socks? Check!, White Tires? Check!, and the list goes on.

Once I had a bike, I decided the best way to get myself to be serious about riding the bike was to sign up for a bunch of races throughout the year. (When I say "races", I mean race in the same sense that runners go to 5k races. Sure, it's a race for somebody, but certainly not for me.) I figured that if forked over the money for the ride that I'd surely train for it. This actually worked out fairly well.

Here are the major rides I ended up doing (in chronological order).

• Real Ale Ride (50 miles) (Didn't have GPS Logging yet)
• Cow Creek Classic (55 Miles) (link 1) (link 2) (Hadn't quite perfected GPS Logging yet)
• Tour de Payne (100 km)
• Tres Burritos (100 km)
• Hotter'n Hell (100 km) (Checkout the video I made of the ride here--> VIDEO!)
• Livestrong (100 Miles)

To train for these rides, I essentially just rode my bike as much as possible. I did a longer ride (30+ miles) nearly every Saturday or Sunday during June through October. During my peak riding season, I was also riding one to two additional rides during the week (during lunch, to/from work, or in the evening.)

Was all this worth it?

Regarding the "fun" aspect of it? Absolutely yes! It was great to (1) be outside in beautiful Texas and (2) strengthen friendships through many hours/miles of riding.

Regarding the health aspect of it? I'll let the stats do the talking. Every year, the company I work for does a health risk awareness screening for all the employees and this is where I got that data. Those screenings were also the first time I had ever seen stats on my health, such as cholesterol.

All in all, it was tons of fun and I hope to continue to have cycling as part of my life moving forward. Now to ramp up the running and swimming and see if I can pull off a triathlon!