Daily Challenge 1: Back on the Bike

Back in July I was planning on doing the Tour Divide next year, in June 2013. Then I changed my mind. It's still a goal of mine, but I have other things that I'm focusing on right now. Mostly my writing and artwork. In June and July next year, right when I would have been riding the Tour Divide, I'm attending too extremely important writing workshops taught by Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith. No way I could miss those workshops.

Plus I couldn't dedicate the time needed to build my mileage for the Divide. Maybe you can't really train for the ride, but I haven't done over fifty miles in a day yet. I at least need to be able to do a few back-to-back hundred plus mile days. That's only one of the few things I need to do to train for the divide, but it's important.

After putting aside my Divide ambitions I was grieving a bit. That led me to put the bike away for a few weeks. I didn't ride at all.

As I knew it would, that feeling ebbed and went away. I love riding the bike. It's important that I get out and exercise. My day job, and my creative jobs, are essentially sedentary. I need to exercise. I can't always devote the time to ride to work (it takes ~ 3 hours), but that doesn't mean I can't ride.

So I'm starting a new daily challenge. I find challenges helpful. With writing and art doing it each day is crucial. Riding a bike is no different. I was reminded of this recently over on CTRL+Paint.
 
CtrlPaint - The Drawing Habit from matt kohr on Vimeo.

Not only does he mention bicycling, but talks about the need for a daily routine while doing a cool drawing.

The new daily challenge is simple. Get out and ride, or run, each day. At least a half-hour, come rain or sun or snow. If I have the day off the day job I plan to go farther, at least an hour. That means spending 4.5 hours per week, minimum, exercising. I can do that.

Today I went out and rode down to McIntosh Lake and back home. It was warm and sunny without being hot. I saw quite a few other people out on the trail, enjoying the weather. It felt really good to get on the bike again. My ride didn't take me quite an hour, but close enough. I'm not going to stress about a few minutes.

I want to get new pedals for my trike so I can start alternating between it and the mountain bike and running. More variety sounds like it'll be good, interesting and healthy. I'll keep posting about my progress. Most posts will probably end up being short, but I want to keep some sort of a record. If I miss a day, well, then I'll just go out the next day!