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In Reply to: Re: Ever try spinning(i.e. indoor exercise bike)during the winter months posted by Russ57 on June 28, 2002 at 11:39:17:
Enjoy the Fisher, Russ! How are you liking it so far? Is the condition good?
I am seriously considering getting one of those indoor trainers for this winter. I ride with a buddy of mine who's about 5 years older than me, and I'm pushing 39 this August. I used to blow the old geezer away, and between my accident and his training indoors all winter (and he now also took up playing ice hockey in a local rec league!), he just blows me away now!
I'm fast getting into shape, but it's still a battle. When you're younger, you can reach peak fitness very quickly, and by mid-July or whatever I'd be as good as I was going to get for the season...
I noticed that as bikers got older, they lost interest in cycling. No doubt that as the body wears down and "loses it", you shrink away from pursuits that merely remind you that the good old days have gone! Every season for the last, oh, five years at least I've been hoping that this one would be better than the last, that I'd get better, faster, stronger, with more stamina and hill-climbing power...
Of course, the spirit may be willing, but the flesh is weak, so the exact opposite ends up happening! My friend is a bit of a notable exception, but we can see that what is really happening there is not that he's gotten better with age, he's just gotten alot more serious about staying in shape in the off-season to compensate for getting older! So yes, he is BETTER at riding than he was, say, five years ago. But then, he probably wasn't doing even one-quarter the physical training to do it, either!
Many cyclists lose interest not just because they've "gotten a life", and are now too busy to duck out and hob-nob with their cycling buddies for a few hours every other evening or on Sunday afternoons when maybe they should be with their families, but because they don't get the rewards and don't see any improvement in their performances. Quite the contrary, in fact. So if we are being insulted and humiliated every time we hop on the saddle, where did the fun go?
You can compensate to some extent by keeping up with the technologies: The radical frame material technology, the "A" headsets and carbon-fibre fork tubes, the aero wheels, the titanium hardware, the newest and most comfortable of the lightest-weight saddles...
But basically, I think you have to retrain your mind to have a different set of expectations from cycling than you did when you were under 30. You're getting older, you're going to be slower, and your not going to be as powerful, either. Your climbing abilities will suffer most profoundly, and bad habits like smoking are going to start taking their toll.
But I was good, and am still pretty good. I was good enough that once I contemplated getting a racing licence, I would think nothing of doing 200km rides at a 30km/hr. or faster lick, and solo! Now I'm lucky that I can ride AT ALL, that I can maintain those kinds of speeds even over a 30km distance...
But cycling is now also physiotherapy for my messed-up leg, and it works like nothing else. That's its own reward, right there! And I feel better all around, with way more energy, and it gives me a break from audio and gets me out in the fresh air (well, I do live in the country!) to do something other than shovelling snow!
And I have another goal now: To get back into the kind of shape that a 39 year-old guy SHOULD be in, and if I can get close to what I could do on the bike 2 or 3 years ago, I should be happy with that and take it!
When I considered racing, I tried joining a local club. I hated it. I like riding with other people, but the clash of egos, the stupid competitive arrogance of it all, I found I didn't like alot of the people. Many of the better riders seemed oblivious and ignorant of the fact that 90% of your cycling (or any sport, for that matter) abilities rest with your genetics, and have SFA to do with your training, intelligence, or hard work that you put into it. I see guys with the wrong body types just working their butts off on the bike, banging their heads against the wall. I know of one guy who went beserk and over a 10 year period he actually HAS become an awesome cyclist...But again, I'm sure that if I was healthy I could still clean his clock with much less effort in the training! Great athletes are MADE, not born! Mike Tyson is a big, bad, angry and tough SOB, and no amount of training is ever gonna make Don Knotts be able to even give Mikey the smallest fright!
So I got the idea of racing out of my head, I didn't like the culture of it, the shallow egotism of the rampant narcissism that pervaded the whole circus...
I ride because I like to ride, because I like the feel of the wind in my hair, the speed, the endorphin rush. I got into mountain biking not because I liked it, I actually don't like it all that much compared to the road bike riding, even after several years of it. But I liked the group thing, going out with a bunch of guys into wooded areas and messing about and trading jokes, stopping every 15 minutes or so to smoke a joint, and enjoy the beautiful scenery and amazing summer weather. Now those guys got a bit older, some of them had their bikes stolen, another guy has taken up golf instead, and the guys just don't ride together anymore. I go out on my own occasionally, but it just isn't the same...
But on the road bike, I'm OK. I always did most of that alone, and while I enjoy the group rides, too many on the road is actually a hassle, whereas with mountain biking it makes it even more interesting and amusing. You've got traffic to contend with, and road safety becomes a problem when there is more than four or six of you. Even two can be dangerous, since you want to ride side by side, and that means partially blocking a lane and keeping an eye on what is going on behind you, when you really ought to be far more concerned about what is going on in front of you...
I race on the road bike. But I've taken most of the shabby egoism out of it, because I'm only in a race WITH MYSELF. It's about personal bests, about having a yardstick to see what kind of shape you're in. You can be proud if you are riding well, but aside from you, who should care? Speaking of which, before it gets too dark, I'm airborne...SEE YA!
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Follow Ups
- Re: Ever try spinning(i.e. indoor exercise bike)during the winter months - Joe Rosen 16:27:35 06/28/02 (2)
- Re: Ever try spinning(i.e. indoor exercise bike)during the winter months - Russ57 07:26:56 07/01/02 (1)
- Re: Ever try spinning(i.e. indoor exercise bike)during the winter months - Joe Rosen 04:46:37 07/07/02 (0)
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