Bodies

L1033625.DNG, originally uploaded by Susan NYC.

This photo was taken by my friend, Susan. As you can see, I am a skinny guy. I am also a 45 year old guy. This year I have been trying to ride my bicycle for fitness, averaging between 50-100 miles a week. Not a huge amount of distance but enough to keep me limber. Or stiff. Or both. Some weeks I have to travel, so I miss a ride, but I try to keep with it, knowing that the more miles I accumulate, the stronger I should be.

The reason I am riding is that my doctor said I had to lower the ratio of bad to good cholesterol. I also noticed I had developed the slight belly you see here. I am a stick – how could I have a belly?

I shouldn’t be surprised. I wake up to a different body every day. Some mornings I feel great. Other mornings I feel sluggish, almost to the point of being drugged. However, there is no guarantee that either of these extremes or the range of sensation in between will result in a good or bad ride that day. I can feel like a lump of sludge and blow away other cyclists on the climbs. Or I can feel great and barely be able to move the pedals quickly enough to stay upright.

I’ve ridden in the sun, the rain, the cold, the hot, and even in a hailstorm the day all the trees got knocked down in Central Park. None of that seems to be a problem. While my biggest challenge is sometimes just getting my shoes on and getting my ass out of the house, my will-power for riding consistently is actually pretty good.

It is a mystery to me why some days my legs feel like all the riding I’ve done this year has been cumulative while other days all the riding I’ve done feels subtractive.

I am sure there is a metabolic reason. And I am betting someone has something for me to drink that will help me perform better and more consistently every day. But I already drink chocolate milk right after riding, followed by an electrolyte drink and a meal of some kind of protein. That’s about as complicated as I want to get.

Besides, even if I wasn’t cycling regularly, I’d still have good days and bad days. Not sure there is anything wrong with that. So whatever the case, I’d rather wear myself out on the bike than hanging around the house.