Back on the bike

One of the first things I did in the new year in 2013 was to purchase a road bike and get back on the bicycle.

I loved long distance riding growing up in the 1980’s and often would ride an entire day or sometimes even pack up camping gear with my friend and ride hundreds of miles over a long weekend.

Riding and camping in the mid- 1980’s, Brady’s Bend, PA

Now decades, a marriage, and three children later, I noticed that no matter how I stared at myself in the mirror and sucked in my gut, my gut was sure to get anywhere I was going slightly sooner than the rest of me.

I removed the clothes and other debris that were hanging from my multi-station exercise machine in the basement and also decided to invest in a new piece of exercise equipment that I knew I loved–the bicycle.

So I started exercising and riding a bike again and decided to start watching what I ate so maybe I could lose some pounds of fat.  I wasn’t fat, per se, but was skinny fat.

This soon would lead to a journey of overdoing it on cardio, eating way too few calories for far too long, and crashing my metabolism.  Of course I had no idea what was happening at the time, but now that I look back I can’t believe how ill-informed I was on diet and exercise.  I simply thought that burning tons of calories while eating far fewer would lead to weight loss and good health.

I was wrong.

In any case, the bike I chose to purchase was a Diamondback Podium Sport since I wanted a reasonably good road bike but didn’t want to overbuy a full carbon bike.  My decision even got a nice write-up on the Diamonback Bicycles blog later that year.

Diamondback Podium Sport

So I started riding 15-18 miles per outing, 3-4 times per week with a longer ride thrown in on the weekends.

I was having more fun on the roads than I had since I sold off my motorcycles and felt like I was getting healthier and reclaiming my health.

This lead to many good things and health benefits…for a while.