Working (biking) off the stress

I have been looking forward to a bike ride this morning with my now long-time cycling friend Guy Sapirstein. We met at 9am and decided on a 15m ride since it is still early in the season. This makes me smile thinking of friends, including Marty Oppenheimer and Nigel Savage who are about to embark on the Hazon Israel ride (250m over a week)... good for them.

Guy and I both felt a little unsteady at the start... Guy has done even less cycling than me so far this year, and I have been feeling stressed from lots of stuff on my plate. Howver, as I had first noted in October 2006 (if not before), and clearly no secret to most who exercise, the first hour when warming up leads to a much more pleasant ride for the rest of the way, in our case only another short ride home.

Back at home, rehydrating and cooling down, I certainly feel more relaxed and am enjoying the feeling of having burned off some of those stress hormones (or replaced them with the good kind - whatever the bio-chemistry is).

If only I could enjoy such a low-traffic, great weather (60's, sunny) ride every day.

1 comment:

Gahl Berkooz said...

Hi Richard - I meant to drop a line to you regarding conditioning for climbing hills - advice I got from an experienced cyclist is to apply force as you are pulling up on the pedals as well as down, and a good way to get practice with getting this muscle to contribute regularly is to pedal with one leg - don't know if you can do that on a recumbent though...

Best,

Gahl.