A Passion for Running

I’ve begun my 3rd week of bike commuting. Wanna know what I’ve learned so far?

1) The wind is never at my back.

2) I seem to adapt quickly to being on the bike. Week one was hard. Week two I introduced a run on a bike day and it wasn’t bad. And this week I already feel like I could bike every day and run on a few of those days as well. Of course, runs on those days would likely not be fast or particularly long but…we’ll see.

3) I’m not fond of road bikes that pass me and my mountain bike like we’re standing still. Not fond of them at all.

4) I have a “natural” cadence of 90 revolutions per minute. I hope I am stating that with fairly correct cycling lingo. At any rate, my legs seem most comfortable peddling 90 times each per minute. This is fascinating to me since 90 is also the minimum cadence I aim for when running – something I learned under the Pose Method. Are my legs good at 90 because of what I have engrained while running, or is 90 just…natural?

5) A 45 minute bike ride to work more than replaces morning coffee.

Ouch ouch ouch! Today’s April fool’s joke is that I am damn sore! My shoulders are WAY sore from rowing and my calves and hamstrings are WAY sore from POSE drills.

But that’s ok because even though different = sore, sore = growth!

In keeping with Chris’ challenge, I did a couple of different things today. First, I did a little cross-training on one of these:

MAN, that was hard work. I only rowed for 15 minutes but my hamstrings, butt, shoulders and arms killed me!

Afterward, I did some balancing on one of these:

And that was good stuff too. Good for the ankles, good for the arches, good for the core. All good stuff for running and it will complement what Aaron and I are going to do this evening – that being POSE drills.

Three new things in my belt today. Yay me!

uggh…

Want to find out what’s outta shape on your body? Just do a few minutes of rope jumping. I did 20 minutes today and stuff was moving around. Stuff in my abdominal area. Stuff on the sides. Stuff in the “love handle” area…me no likee.

I will say, however that it was GREAT exercise and loads of fun.