Bike training, weeks 2-4
July 20th, 2012 at 9:03 pm ETI’m afraid that my bike training regimen hit a speed bump. I had a good second week, but then an emotionally rough weekend due to circumstances beyond my control, and guess what? It turns out I’m not always in the mood to bike 25 miles, who knew?
So I spent week three putting another 60 miles or so on the electric bike and getting no exercise at all. Which is fine — the electric bike is lots of fun, for reasons totally unrelated to my physical health, and to be fair to myself, I brought my weight down about 6 pounds since I started this regimen and have held it there, so good stuff. But as my boyfriend reminded me today, I only have a couple of months before I have to bike a hundred miles in a day, which is a lot more miles than I’ve ever done before. So I’d better get cracking.
Today it rained off and on (nothing like Wednesday, now that sh*t was extreme) so I didn’t take the electric bike in the morning, which meant I found myself at work in the evening with only my trusty red folding bike, which I hopped on and rode home in a steady light rain, and I remembered why I enjoyed riding it so much (bounce bounce bounce! the Tigger of bikes) and something tells me I’ll do 15 or 20 miles this weekend and I’ll be back in the saddle.
I have to say that four days in a row on the electric bike (including a couple of trips all the way up to the West 70s and back) were a joy of their own. I’m up to almost 400 road miles and getting mighty comfortable on the thing, which is well-engineered for stability and fast enough to ride in ordinary Manhattan traffic without feeling outgunned — in fact, both drivers and cyclists tend to mistake it for a motorbike, which gives the former a useful paradigm for interacting with it, and occasionally pisses off the latter. I got a nasty lecture from a (lady!) cyclist yesterday that I didn’t quite understand, since I’d taken great care not to crowd her or ride up on her. But I’m mature enough (and, as importantly, have had enough time in New York, where everyone’s pissed off about something) not to pay too much mind to angry people getting up in my face for their own reasons, and I just waved and let her ride on.
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Rich Mintz blogs on online fundraising and social media, American history and culture, bicycling and urbanism, food, technology, and other topics. Professionally, he's an expert in fundraising, constituency development, and social media for nonprofits, cultural organizations, cause-related marketers, and corporations. He is based in New York, where he serves as Vice President, Strategy, for 
