So in my last post I wrote about all the mileage, money, and carbon emissions we've saved from my commuting by bike rather than by car. Some of my friends know that I always talk up the health benefits of commuting but I didn't mention anything in the last post. Well it's time to augment my last post with some additional details for the health benefits!
My first reason for commuting by car was actually mental health. I used to drive an hour each way on my commute for several years and just couldn't take all the time in the car anymore. Once I changed my job location, I was excited at the prospect of being able to actually ride my bike to work. Time out on the road just biking along really helped me tolerate sitting at a desk all day. I see deer, birds, frogs, snakes, chickens (there's actually a chicken along part of my commute that ambushes me sometimes...jumping out of the bushes when I least expect it), and all sorts of other stuff!
Biking took more time to get to and from work, but that's not so bad. I looked at it two ways:
- The commute time on my bike was as long as my old commute, but it didn't feel like it was just wasted time in my car.
- I'd be spending about an hour in my car commuting if I drove. Biking takes an additional hour, but that actually means 2 hours of exercise.
When I started commuting, I weighed a little over 200 lbs....once I hit that weight I knew needed a change. My friend Pat gave me tips for getting fit and how to eat healthier (what Pat calls the "linslean" :-) ) - because 90% of weight loss is what you eat! As a result, I progressively dropped weight until where I am now - 165 lbs. Maybe I'll put up some comparison pictures in a future post so you can see the difference.
To give an idea of what commuting adds to all this, my average commute burns about 1300 calories (round trip according to Strava). I added that and all my other bike commuting to date today to my spreadsheet and found that I've burned about 51,813 calories this year. It should be said that the calories counted by any system are somewhat inflated (I took the lower bound of a bunch of samples anyway from the all the routes) and that a rider will typically eat to compensate for calories burned (especially for higher intensity workouts). I hope that means the number is a lower bound but at least gives you an idea of how much you burn.
How about performance? I started commuting more and more and Pat told me that the biggest thing I needed to get faster was just miles on my legs. Last summer I struggled to keep up with the B group of a group ride I do and I was a solid B rider by the end of summer. I raced in the fall in cyclocross, doing way better than the single race of my previous year. I commuted all winter and at the start of the group ride again I was barely able to hold onto the A group of the same group ride. Each week I'd manage to stay on a bit longer until I was able to do the whole ride with them! (Since then I had a knee problem from running and have lost a bit of fitness, but I'm on my way back!) I can definitely say that commuting has been a major contributing factor to how fast I've gotten.
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