{"id":6278,"date":"2011-06-30T23:42:40","date_gmt":"2011-07-01T05:42:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/?p=6278"},"modified":"2011-08-20T00:16:34","modified_gmt":"2011-08-20T05:16:34","slug":"running-vs-cycling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/?p=6278","title":{"rendered":"First Ride"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that my bike is back in working order (thanks to Mad Duck Cyclery<\/a> in Grapevine), I went for my first real ride Thursday night. It was the first time in my life that I had consciously gone riding for exercise rather than simply for fun or for transportation. So I approached it differently. My goal was not to get somewhere or just see the sights, but to burn up my quads. <\/p>\n

Mission accomplished. <\/p>\n

I put in about 5.5 miles at our local park, which has a really nice trail. In the process I became one of those cyclists that used to annoy me and make me nervous as a runner or walker on the same trail. Now I understand why some cyclists go so fast. Since I’m new to cycling and riding a 31-32 lb mountain bike, I only averaged 10mph or so. But I had a blast. You can see so much more of the world on a bike than you can while running. <\/p>\n

Despite the heat (probably low 90s), the ride wasn’t too difficult, for two main reasons:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Since I’m going faster, the extra wind helped keep me cool.<\/li>\n
  2. My quads, not my cardiovascular system, were the limiting factor, the opposite of my running limitation. Before I could really push my heart and lungs, my quads screamed until I slowed down. That works out great, since my primary goal for cycling is to strengthen my legs.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    So right now, my plan is to run three times a week (12 miles this week, 13 next week, and so on) and ride once, building up to maybe an hour. I have this crazy idea that my quads are the final piece of the puzzle – that once they are strong enough, I’ll be able to tackle a half-marathon. Or maybe even a triathlon, if I could ever learn how to swim more than a couple minutes at a time. I think Jenny will beat me to the tri, though. She’s planning her first indoor tri for September. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Now that my bike is back in working order (thanks to Mad Duck Cyclery in Grapevine), I went for my first real ride Thursday night. It was the first time in my life that I had consciously gone riding for … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6278"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6278"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6491,"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6278\/revisions\/6491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}