Five Reasons to Take Up Biking

Comment First

Biking is a continuously popular sport that seems to have more and more staying power as the years go by. Sharing the road with cars and joggers, cyclists seem to have found a sort of “middle ground” between the effortlessness of motor transportation and the grinding exercise of running. If you’ve never biked before, there are plenty of reasons to take it up as a hobby. Here are five of them:

You can travel some far-out distances – It’s rare that you get to simultaneously exercise and travel far – most people associate traveling far with taking a plane or a train – but you can do it with a bike. If you have clear road or paths, you can even hit some car-like speeds on your bike while working up a sweat and getting your heart rate up. Running is confined to the distance between your legs, and swimming is an even slower endeavor. They make great exercise, too, but not if you’ve got some places to see.
Joint-free motion – Well, not motion is actually “joint-free,” but “joint-pain-free” might describe the cycling motion accurately. You get the exercise of working your legs up and down hills without the pounding of running on the treadmill, building up knee strength and keeping yourself well-perserved.
Racing – One fun thing to do with cycling as a skill is develop your talent enough to enter a race; bicycle races are fun and they give you something to shoot for. Casual bikers might not find this an altogether appealing option, but if you don’t want to stay complacent in your biking and would like to see where you stack up against the competition, racing is ideal.
A solid workout – With bikes, you can turn up the resistance and tread up some difficult hills – going uphill on a bike is sometimes harder than running up it! You can do this while enjoying the joint-pain-free motion of reason #2 and not worrying about impact as you put stress on your muscles, not your joints. You can also turn up the speed on flatter surfaces to give yourself a workout at any point.
An easy habit to maintain – Running and swimming often require a lot of energy, but telling yourself you’re going on a bike ride is quite a different story. Without the pain of aching joints, you feel like you’re gliding on air half the time you’re on a bike. The challenge is as easy or as difficult as you make it, and every time you head out, you’ll gain some nice speed you can’t get in running shoes alone.

Originally posted 2008-11-24 04:55:37.

This post involves: