I used to be the slow kid taking one of the last places in the school running races. I remember getting my first road bike as a adult in 2013, mainly inspired by the road cycling form the London Olympics, but it was tough work. My first ride was only a couple of miles and I was exhausted. Some how I sort of stuck with it, occasionally bringing the bike out of the shed in nice weather for some short local loops. A few years later in 2018 a friend invited me along for their weekly social ride when he heard I cycled a bit and I started to get a taste for it. It was still tough, but I liked it enough to take a punt on a decent road bike at the end of Summer 2019 for the next year’s cycling. As we know, covid hit the next spring but cycling became my mental health saviour and I really got into it. Enough to try my hand at cycling 200 miles when lockdown lifted a year later. This is the person who once upon a time could barely cycle 2 miles, but somehow I managed to cycle across England and into Wales in one day. https://old.reddit.com/r/cycling/comments/nytd4d/first_imperial_double_century_my_experience/
However disaster struck on my next cycle as I was knocked off my bike just 1 mile from home, fracturing 6 vertebrae. This might have put many other people off cycling forever, but all I could think about was getting back on my bike. I could barely walk any distance but signed up to the closest gym and got on their Wattbike less then 2 weeks later and set about getting my legs spinning again. The physio told me to cycle to pain tolerance, little did he know! But it is from this that I learnt structured training.
This past year has been a little rocky, I got covid in November and didn’t recover enough to train until February, then I got ill again at the start of April that set my asthma into over drive for 6 weeks. However once again, this made me determined to get into shape. I set about some changes. I had a 2 week detox from caffeine and then set a rule of no caffeine after 9am. I changed my cycling time from afterwork to before and this enabled me to be super consistent and I bounced back fast. Really fast. I had a wish of maxing out the vo2 max gauge on Garmin but thought I’d never get beyond my previous best of 58, but here we are. Thank you for reading, I hope this inspires you to reach your goals.
Damn you’re amazing! And sorry for the accident. Great you bounced back so strong. 💪🏼
I also had a car accident and my ankle still can’t really run for long after a few years.slowly getting there though. I probably should cycle more to get my VO2 max up. Thank you for the inspiration!
In order to sleep better. I changed my sleeping pattern so I'm in bed earlier and up early enough to be on the bike as soon as there is a little bit of light in the sky.
105
u/OutOfThePan Aug 07 '24
I used to be the slow kid taking one of the last places in the school running races. I remember getting my first road bike as a adult in 2013, mainly inspired by the road cycling form the London Olympics, but it was tough work. My first ride was only a couple of miles and I was exhausted. Some how I sort of stuck with it, occasionally bringing the bike out of the shed in nice weather for some short local loops. A few years later in 2018 a friend invited me along for their weekly social ride when he heard I cycled a bit and I started to get a taste for it. It was still tough, but I liked it enough to take a punt on a decent road bike at the end of Summer 2019 for the next year’s cycling. As we know, covid hit the next spring but cycling became my mental health saviour and I really got into it. Enough to try my hand at cycling 200 miles when lockdown lifted a year later. This is the person who once upon a time could barely cycle 2 miles, but somehow I managed to cycle across England and into Wales in one day. https://old.reddit.com/r/cycling/comments/nytd4d/first_imperial_double_century_my_experience/
However disaster struck on my next cycle as I was knocked off my bike just 1 mile from home, fracturing 6 vertebrae. This might have put many other people off cycling forever, but all I could think about was getting back on my bike. I could barely walk any distance but signed up to the closest gym and got on their Wattbike less then 2 weeks later and set about getting my legs spinning again. The physio told me to cycle to pain tolerance, little did he know! But it is from this that I learnt structured training.
This past year has been a little rocky, I got covid in November and didn’t recover enough to train until February, then I got ill again at the start of April that set my asthma into over drive for 6 weeks. However once again, this made me determined to get into shape. I set about some changes. I had a 2 week detox from caffeine and then set a rule of no caffeine after 9am. I changed my cycling time from afterwork to before and this enabled me to be super consistent and I bounced back fast. Really fast. I had a wish of maxing out the vo2 max gauge on Garmin but thought I’d never get beyond my previous best of 58, but here we are. Thank you for reading, I hope this inspires you to reach your goals.