Life Cycle

So, I’ve bought myself a cycle trainer.  Why on earth would I do this to myself, and why am I telling you about it?

The short answer is that I need to be a bit fitter than I currently am.  Not that I’m massively unfit, it’s just that I’d like to level out the weight gain from the regular food-based events we have in the office.  I could also use a bit more cardiovascular exercise, and biking into the office would seem to be a pretty painless way to accomplish both.  Unless of course it’s the middle of winter, or it’s raining (of which both apply as I write this).  Even then, it’s not a hard ride.  I – and no doubt the rest of the office – would just prefer that I didn’t arrive as a wet and bedraggled mess, causing a health and safety nightmare on the office entranceway tiles.

That said, we do already have a number of cyclists in the the office, encompassing a wide spectrum of zealotry.  Some are merely cycle-adjacent, some commute with alacrity.  Then there are The Others.  Those whose downhill antics would not be far off justifying some kind of entry in the DSM5.  I am not aiming to emulate the latter.  Getting to and from work is enough to be getting on with.

So, the plan is to get some cardio exercise in over winter, and by the time the decent weather comes back, I’ll be in a position to take advantage of the myriad of cycleways in Christchurch – and avoid a bit of traffic in the process.  These cycleways are great.  I use them already on a moderately regular basis.  While placement of some have been controversial, overall I’d have to say they are encouraging more people to commute by bike, which can only be a good thing.

Hence the cycle trainer.  I currently have an older mountain bike that’s always been a fraction small for me, but should be fine to become a fixed training bike.  In the garage, this will become an all-weather anytime ride that avoids having to deal with parked cars – other than my own – or distracted drivers.  Given that it’s winter, non-rainy daylight hours generally have more than enough activities to fill them already.  I can do without the stress of not having the time to do yet another thing.

Current plans are to set up a spare PC or laptop (can you tell I’m in IT?) with training software that connects to the trainer, can monitor my power output, and adjust the magnetic friction to simulate climbs.  We’ll see how we go with that, but I’m probably going to want something to give me a comparison over time, and also make things a bit more interesting while I’m treadling away like a mad thing.  Maybe I’ll catch some of the TV shows that I’ve been told I should watch over the past few years.  Exercise my plexus, as it were.

So, just like my blog about my double-glazing, this one will have some future updates.  Hopefully positive ones.  If the sequel in this saga finds me pedalling away in the garage, watching movies on a 70” screen while wearing a set of Apple Vision Pro goggles and cursing at competitors in an AR group race, the DSM5 entry will practically write itself.

Oh, and it’s the last Thursday of the month shortly.  Long live the Office Breakfast!