Discussion Board

I dont mean the harley davidson kind but the regular bicycles, Me and my daughter ride close to a mile a day. Its tougher going up hills with my 34 pound daughter but we love it and I love the workout that I get.

Anyone else?

There have been several discussions on biking, but most have been in the Lounge.

I am striving hard to bike for errands as much as possible these days to minimize our car use. So far this month, I've logged 154 miles on my bike. (Too tired to go check the car odometer to compare...) My DH bike commutes to work and has recently put together an Xtracycle to increase our ability to carry big, bulky, and/or heavy items by bike. http://www.xtracycle.com/

Hi, I have been a biker for 2 years now, last Sunday I just completed my first 100 km marathon. It was great, I made in 4 hours. The uphill part (which was about 10 km at once) was pretty though, but made it just fine, without stepping down. I have a treking (road) bike, not the real "profesional" bike.
I am going next year, too!
Other than that I go biking about 2 times per week, for 1-2 hours. I feel great afterwords. It's a great workout.
Take care,
Polona

About 3 years ago my husband and I dusted off the old bikes that had been sitting in the garage for years--we started weekly biking trips that we are continuing to this day! Well, this is Nebraska--what I mean by "weekly" is in the months when it's warm enough, which is May through November.

We found that if we went a little further each week, that our stamina built up very quickly. The longest trip we managed was 50 miles (yay!!!), we did 45 miles a couple of times, but usually our trips are 25 to 30 miles. We never travel on the roads or the highway (too scared) but there are LOTS of lovely hiker/biker trails near here. In fact, a new one was just completed that is much closer to us, so this summer we will try biking a short distance mid-week as an add-on to our weekend trips.

We have so much fun, it's such a lovely activity and takes us away from the usual desk activities. We like to go on the trails that take you on old railbeds through beautiful countryside, where we see birds and wildlife. One thing I am so grateful to Dr. McDougall for, is that we got healthy and fit enough to start biking and enjoy this experience we would have never had otherwise.

I wish I could bike as far as all of you! I am out of shape but I'm exercising everyday to try and get back to where I was when I was younger. When we went on our honeymoon after we were married we went on a 20 mile trail from our cabin quite frequently.

This was before arthritis of the knees but I hope to get near there again. I live in michigan so Im limited too for the times of year I can bike due to weather. I need to get a basket on my bike so I can run errands in town with my bike instead of just walking into town. Today unfortunately is way too hot to be bike riding with my daughter, but its suppose to cool off soon again. We bike on the roads near here mostly as we usually have my daughter with us but we use to go offroading on some pretty rough trails before her. That is my favorite kind of riding to get out in the trails around nature

Polona- congrats on your marathon!

We bike and do 13 mile ride at evening on bike path. We try to do this faster each time.

Thanks

I live in a really small town so its never really busy here but we do stick to sidewalks through the town when we can. I need a new bike. I have my old Murray from 15 years ago but it is a great bike as my husband has kept it up for me all these years.

Our bikes are 22 years old! They've only had about a dozen years of use though, and only in the last 3 years have we ridden them a lot. They were pretty good quality bikes at the time we bought them and have been very reliable. Only one of them has needed real maintenance (surgery on the pedal hub or whatever it's called).

By today's 'biker' standards they are pretty clunky, but we don't care--we're not in it for speed or looks, we just want the exercise! LOL! Also we have very non-fashionable wide cushy seats, as our over-50 butts don't take well to sitting on those hard little rails they call seats nowadays.

Lots of flashy bikers pass us on the trails, but we outdistance many of them in the long run.

We are over 30 butts here but we still love them cushioned We have the oversized gel seats, they are so nice! I am long past the age of looking flashy myself. my bike was close to $300 back then so it would be a pretty expensive bike now. It was my first big gift i bought myself when I graduated from high school. I loved it and still do. My bike has had many years of riding. I do need new brakes and gears though now and hope to get them fixed this summer. My sister used it at college for 4 years when I didnt use it much to ride across the university since parking was so difficult and she had to park so far away.

If you keep riding your bike, you'll gain stamina and strength. Personally I like the thinner saddles as the thick cushy one caused pain in my sciatica. Getting used to the thinner saddles is really just a matter of spending time in the saddle. In other words, riding.

I go through phases of riding a lot and then going on to something else for a while. We've been trying to minimize car use so starting June 1, we began to bike for as many errands as possible. (I logged about 170 miles on the bike last month.) DH even got an Xtracycle and built a trailer so we can avoid using the car just because we have a lot to carry. We had 3 CSA shares to bring home last night (one for a friend) and he hauled the following in the Xtracycle bags and an icechest on the trailer:

1 watermelon
2 Canary melons
3 spaghetti squash
4 cucumbers
10 tomatoes (more than our share because I brought home the bruised ones to salvage)
12 potatoes
9 ears of corn
2 crookneck squash
2 zucchini (one almost baseball bat size)

Guess I'll be eating southwestern type food this week! (Picture and menu will be posted on my blog later today.)

Wow! That is alot of food to carry!

And a lot of wonderful food to eat!

Definitely alot of wonderful food to eat

Autumn, you should see the size of the watermelon we brought home last night. It spans the entire width of our refrigerator! After eating the tasty red part, I'll be making watermelon rind pickles.