I don’t like cycling. I don’t always hate it, but I’d much rather be running. But since I’m still waiting for my injured leg to be back at 100 percent, I don’t have a lot of other options if I want to get back in shape. I motivated myself Saturday by setting out to ride the longest I’ve ever gone. I accomplished that by riding 43 miles. Yep, 43 boring, un-fun miles.
I present to you the occasionally nonsensical “Thoughts of a Runner While Bicycling For Two Hours and Forty-Five Minutes”:
- “I’ve been out here for two hours. I could have run a half-marathon and be relaxing by now.” (The fact that I’d cycled almost three times the length of a half-marathon didn’t matter to my thinking. It still doesn’t.)
- “Headwind sucks when riding. I will never again complain about it when running.”
- “Did that driver really just speed up to pass and turn in front of me, making me brake and start looking for an out? Yep, they did.” Five minutes later: “Really? Another driver just did the same thing? I knew I hated the town of Galt; apparently they’re so uncivilized that they don’t know what a bike is.”
- “Stoplights really suck. They are not an issue when running.”
- “The wind shifted so I STILL have headwind? I think that’s a sign I’ve been out here forever.”
- “My back is tired. And why are the bases of my thumbs sore? These things are not issues while running, either.”
- “Ack, a bug.”
Suffice it to say that I’m a runner, not a bicyclist.
I was a competitive swimmer my whole life and became a runner a few years ago. But I’ll never do a triathlon because I despise cycling for all of your reasons noted above and more! (That and my running-based predjudice against cyclists who regularly come within millimeters of clipping me without giving a signal)
See, I’d consider a duathlon (biking, running), because at least I could finish the event. I’m just not a good swimmer, and it exhausts me almost immediately.
I like to run more than bicycle. But I sure like bicycling more than swimming. I haven’t been able to run for a year. So the bike and I have become very good friends, and there is no better way to get me to bike than to threaten me with swimming. I swam yesterday. BLECH!
I keep thinking that if I get faster on the bike, maybe I will like it better. Of course, that would require me to bike a lot more often, and do things like conquer clip-in pedals…