Biking Seattle

There are only so many ways to write about not riding my bike, and far fewer ways to do it that people would actually want to read, but that’s the theme so far this winter.

Part of the problem is my inability to deal with a known bug in my brain’s calculation process. If I ride four times one week, then once the next week, then don’t ride at all, then go out two days, my brain doesn’t think, “I didn’t get out much this month – was lucky to get a ride in each week.” No, the part of my brain which makes these calculations instead feeds me this line: “I’m riding about four times a week. Good work.”

A corollary here is my inclination to weigh the benefits of riding regularly (better fitness, lower weight) and completely discount the effect not getting out might have. This was driven home on a short commuting run last week. After riding to and from campus a couple times a week and adding other rides once or twice a week, I wasn’t exactly sprinting up the hills, but the tamer rises and drops had become a forgotten fact of life. A month or so off the bike, though, left me panting at any incline, even one I’d have counted as “flat” a short time before.

Identifying these issues is far easier than combating the problems. Working from home with classes one day a week makes it easy to pass on riding in the cold and wet, and it doesn’t take long to get out of the habit entirely, staying in even when the sun is out. Facing this blog and seeing the lack of posts might be the best motivation I’ll have – I need to pick up the pace here as well as on my bike. It’s time to give myself something to write about again.

I started this blog to see if it was actually possible to get around Seattle by bike as a very casual cyclist. After two months of casually biking around Seattle, I can absolutely say the answer is … maybe.

The weather hasn’t been as much of an issue as I would have guessed. The hills, on the other hand, are both better and worse than I initially feared. Continue reading…

Find the hills – and avoid them.

Obviously, Seattle is built on hills. The grades on some streets are daunting even in a car. The steepest of the streets are pretty obviously not to be tackled by a biker at my level (fat and out of shape, although hopefully moving a bike around Seattle will begin to change that). There are other streets, however, which don’t appear so bad in comparison, but are still too much for my beginning fitness.

I know this, and I knew this before I started my first trip across town to the University of Washington. I started at a higher elevation north of campus, so in theory I could find a route which minimized elevation gain. On paper, I thought I’d found one. And then I felt so good going downhill, I missed a turn somewhere and ended up funnelled to the wrong corner of campus. I started to make my way up a hill without an escape route; the only sidewalk was across three lanes of traffic. Halfway up, though, the realities of my body won out, and I managed to squeeze out of the way of most of the traffic until I could make a break across traffic to the sidewalk, where I walked the bike up the rest of the way without shame.

Lesson learned. No matter how good I feel going down, I am not yet going to win in a face-off between me on a bike and a Seattle hill. When I map a route for my own well being, stick with it. Although the goal is to be able to make it up at least the mid-range hills after a few more weeks on the bike.