Cycling. What Else Do You Need To Do To Keep Fit?

What do you do to keep fit? You really need to keep fit. Especially as you get older like I am. I’m 45 now.

I started to notice that I’m getting a little fat over the last few years, so I had to find something that I could do to keep fit. It was cycling for me.

I reall love cycling, I just love it.

I found cycling recently. I was getting pretty unfit and I didn’t want to be unfit, and I was getting older. I knew I had to do something to make a change in my life.

I tried to do some swimming. Can you believe how boring swimming is? Up and down a pool hour after hour. Well actually it was probably never longer than 30 minutes but it felt like hour after hour to me and I hated it.

Underneath you there’s a line and you just watch that line, there’s nothing else to do other than swim. It’s really boring and I just couldn’t keep at it for long.

So after trying swimming I knew that wouldn’t work for me. I knew I couldn’t spend 4 days a week putting some swimming into my day. Because if youre going to keep fit you’ve got to do it for at least 4 or 5 days a week or you’re really just wasting your time.

And you’ve got to do about a  half hour minumum. Less than that and its a bit of a waste of time unfortunately.

So once I  decided I didn’t like swimming I really had to find something else to do. And like swimming I found running pretty boring too so that was out. What was I to do? Then I thought about cycling.

But I had a problem. I didn’t have a bike. So I wasn’t going to be cycling too far with no bike to do it on. Well actually I did have a bike but it’s really old and all rusted, so no use at all. So I had to get hold of a bike and and they aren’t cheap to buy a new bike.

So I went and talked  to some of the people in the cycling club and found out that there was a new cycling group starting up and that I could join it. So I figured that  it was time to just go out there and buy a new bike.

So I joined the group  and got cycling. I loved it. They did long rides and short rides and I did them all, one by one. But after while I started to get a little frustrated with the pace of the riding, it being too slow to me.

Now Im not young, 45 actually, but even so I wanted to go a little faster. The ride was more social  than a workout and I wanted a workout as well as a social ride. Eventually I dropped out to ride on my own because I wanted to ride a little harder to get a real workout at the same time.

The club also had another riding group that went out Sundays and it had much better riders in it,  and so I decided that I would try and join the Sunday ride, but was worried that I would never keep up with those better riders.

But the bike that I had already bought was a half mountain bike and half road bike, it was called a hybrid, and so I had the wrong bike again. So again I had an issue with no bike that would do the job, but by then I knew I really loved riding so I bought a road bike and joined the Sunday group. They ride very fast and sometimes I keep up, occasionally I don’t keep up with them.

But of course its a hard workout, exactly what I needed.
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Give Me A Holiday Any Weekend. »« The Country And Cycles Of Nature

The Country And Cycles Of Nature

I’ve told you about the fact that I live in the country, today I want to tell you why I live in the country and why I like living in the country.

Because I do.

Living in the country is a real pleasure and it’s something that I’ve done for quite a few years. I grew up in the city as a kid but you wouldn’t get me back there again.

There’s just so much to life in the country that you just can’t find living in a city. One example for you. I love cycling and do it heaps of it out here in the country. It helps keep me fit and that’s important and I definitely need to keep fit, much fitter in fact. And it gets me into some beautiful outdoors locations and scenery.

Around me theres so much to cycle past each day. Fields with cows, sheep, alpacas and goats. Horses too, though I dont like horses all that much. But I love cows and sheep. I have my own cows which I’ve told you about, each with its own calf, and I love them.

There’s so  many advantages to living out here and cows and calves and chickens at my place is just one of them. It’s nature and I love nature, and to see it.

Now it’s near the end of summer and it’s been so hot. There’s been some really hot weather and it’s getting on top of me, I don’t like the heat at all. Of course it would still be hot if I lived in the city but here it’s still better, to me. I see nature, I see the seasons come and go and I see things like the grass start to grow longer and stop and the leaves fall off the trees and regrow again.

I see the leaves  of the trees turn all different colors, there’s so many wonderful colors. I see the new trees growing beneath the old ones when the seeds germinate. I see the old and the young, I see the new and the not so new and I see regeneration.

Nature cycles like I like to cycle, and I love to watch it all happening right through the  year.

Maybe if I lived in a city I’d have a little garden, maybe no garden. And I might not even have a tree at all. Maybe all I’d have is some solid concrete in my back yard and no more, except a BBQ perhaps, I love a good BBQ.

And unlike here  I probably wouldn’t get to see the seasons change like I do now all year long.

It’s so sterile in the city and I spent a large part of my life in the city so I’ve been there. Of course it’s just me that thinks it’s sterile, not everyone.

Of course all my family lives in the city and they love it. My brother is a  doctor and hes single, so he likes the single life of the city. Theres things to do there that he’s into a lot, and it suits him. But the city is not for me, suffice to say.

I’ve lived in the city for a long time , I grew up there and I really feel now like I’ve wasted so many years there. Now of course it’s true that I didn’t waste them. I had my time and I lived my life but it feels like wasted time. I should  ask my brother if he’d like to live in the country, it would be nice if he lived nearby, but I think it’s unlikely. If I suggested it to him I doubt that he’d move here. (more…)

Cycling. What Else Do You Need To Do To Keep Fit? »« You See More Of The Weather When You Live In The Country