I believe that you have read at least a few of my previous cycling articles written here. Otherwise this article may not make sense.
I believe nothing in life is possible without being a fanatic. Call me a cycling fanatic if you will. Sometimes you wonder, are there not better methods to be fit and save the planet? Of course there may be, but this is a method that I know and enjoy to the hilt and that’s why I write about it.
Just because I write this article, I am not the best cyclist in town. In fact, I don’t even qualify to be called a good cyclist! I am not into competition or macho stuff. That’s way beyond my interest. I slog and sloth it out to office at an average speed of 17-20kmph. There are a lot of guys who are intensely passionate about cycling, much more than I am. I salute them for their spirit and consider it an honour to know them, though I cannot list out all their names here.
My writing about cycling is not to exclude or ridicule other means of transportation. That will be stupid on my part. But know one thing: a cycle is one of the most efficient means of transportation known to man today. Why do I say that. If you have a packet of 1 byte with a 10 byte header, would you call it efficient data transmission? Yet that is what we IT guys do when we drive a car alone to office. A person weighing 70 kgs riding a car weighing 1400 kgs to take him to work. Where is the efficiency? Its like 20 bytes of header to take 1 byte of data! Whereas if he is cycling the weight of a good cycle is about 15-18 kgs. See the optimization.
I always believe that something that is simple to do (like cycling) is also simple not to do and that is a trap where most of us fall. I respect your right to cycle, I respect your right not to cycle. If you look for reasons to cycle you will find them. If you look for reasons not to cycle, there are plenty too. The choice is completely yours!
To me, the reasons *for* outweighed heavily the ones *against*. The feeling of the nice morning bangalore wind and sunshine on the skin and the slight sweat far outweighed the so called risks and other perceived notions. When I am on the bike two things come to a standstill - world and time. In a way I found my own private "get away" for the time I am on the bike. My own heaven. All the worries and tensions and such tend to amazingly melt away when I am on the bike. This one reason alone is enough for me to continue cycling for my life time.
Cycling is not an answer to all of humanity’s problems. It is not so glamorous as we think. It is not a magic solution for weight loss. You will not suddenly look like those ancient greek sculptures of men just because you started pedaling a few kilometers a day.
Good inclines will make you huff and puff, like a steam locomotive in full traction, inspite of having all those gears. You may look plain stupid to others.
There is sweat, rain, heat, irritated car and bike riders, cow dung on the road and that occasional idiot spitting on you accidentally from bmtc buses. Dogs run behind you, barking menacingly in dark alleys. All that happens. Or as we saw in Forrest Gump, “shit happens”. So what?
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Can you beat me?
My question to you is simple: can you beat my 50000 km cycling?
I am sure that most of you are going to yell an emphatic NO. And on the face of it, sounds very correct. Even some of the accomplished cyclists will have to think about it for a while.
I am overweight and arrogant. Not exactly the fittest guy you expect to see on the bike. Most of you reading this might be weighing under 80 kgs. Which means u have about a 23 kg weight advantage over me. Some of you are even 10 yrs younger to me. I am 34. Even with all that advantage in your favour, can you beat my fifty thousand kilometers?
The logic is simple folks. The real question is how much time will it take to do 50k. As a lifetime goal its very reachable, no doubt. But do you want to spend a lifetime to do something I did in 10.5 years? This 10.5 yrs is including a total of 16 months of onsite travel.
To do 50000 km in a car in a year is a pain, forget cycling. If you do 25000km in a car a year, you are considered driving too much! :) A jumbo jet flying at 900 km per hour will take 55 hours of flying to reach 50k mark.
50K is not easy - anyway you look at it. Remember this, if you are one of those stud cyclists pedalling Bangalore-Mysore and back every week, you will be doing approx 300km in a weekend. If you do that week on week for 52 weeks, you will hit only 15600km per year. That means you will take 3 years and 3 months almost to hit 50K.
I have shared in my previous blog the tip: daily cycling. The best way is cycle to work! This works especially well if you stay far away from office. Any big goal has to be broken down into something manageable. And we have to work on it relentlessly, day on day, month on month. But dont begin with something like 20km per day. If you are new to cycling, start cycling 2 km per day for a week. Then graduate to 4 per day for a week. And so on, based on your comfort. Over a period of 2 months, I believe that 40 km per day is easily achievable if you stay 20 km away from work.
Make cycling a habit - if you want to go to the nearby grocery shop or post office or whatever, just take the bike. Slowly this will become a habit and you will start cycling everywhere! And without even thinking consciously about it. And thats how the magic begins to happen. Slowly but surely. And the effects start compounding.
I highly recommend everyone to read the book "The COMPOUND Effect" by Darren Hardy. This man very clearly talks about what it takes to do what seems "impossible". The secret is daily routine, and doing it in manageable chunks. This is not a health book, but a book for organising yourself, in the category of "self-help". Dont snigger, one can never be too good to read this book. I found it out myself!
For example, he talks about how a 2 hr workout 5 days a week is not sustainable in the long run, at least for 99.9% of us. Because it is fundamentally a very tough thing - the momentum and enthusiasm slowly wanes away. 5 day work out slowly will turn into 3 and 2 day work outs and will eventually stop.
And then we tend to drop it completely. The best would be a 1 hour work out 3-4 times a week, max.
Please follow a similar approach when u start cycling. When we begin doing something, we tend to be over-enthusiastic and do it overly. When u begin something, keep a lifetime goal of continuing it - thats the sure shot way of success. Very very few of us can sustain a lifetime practice of 2 hour workout a day, 5 days a week. Cycling is far more simpler than that.
The key is consistence. It is far more effective to do something at a lesser rate (20 km per day), but maintaining it 365 days a year, rather than do superhuman stunts (like 250 km per day) once or twice or thrice a month.
20km per day is not big deal guys - you will do it in one hour. Will it happen automatically? No. Lets say u stay just 5km from office and u ride up and down to work. Thats 10 km. Once your are back home in the evening, if you are willing to switch off the idiot box and do some pedalling, you will enjoy it all the more! 10 km ride takes 30 mins. This is very very moderate rate, almost without any exertion at all.
I highly recommend you guys to read this book - this will help you not only beating my 50K, but in your life too. I have not read such a good book in a very long time. PERIOD. And I read a lot of books, mind you.
You can download a pdf of this book for just 12 USD. Check the net.
And after that, the tough part - put the stuff into practice and beat me to 1 lakh km!!
Hey, believe it or not, if I have inspired at least one person to really DO this, and beat me with any target (distance or time), I consider the purpose of this blog done.
Good luck to all cyclists.
I am sure that most of you are going to yell an emphatic NO. And on the face of it, sounds very correct. Even some of the accomplished cyclists will have to think about it for a while.
I am overweight and arrogant. Not exactly the fittest guy you expect to see on the bike. Most of you reading this might be weighing under 80 kgs. Which means u have about a 23 kg weight advantage over me. Some of you are even 10 yrs younger to me. I am 34. Even with all that advantage in your favour, can you beat my fifty thousand kilometers?
The logic is simple folks. The real question is how much time will it take to do 50k. As a lifetime goal its very reachable, no doubt. But do you want to spend a lifetime to do something I did in 10.5 years? This 10.5 yrs is including a total of 16 months of onsite travel.
To do 50000 km in a car in a year is a pain, forget cycling. If you do 25000km in a car a year, you are considered driving too much! :) A jumbo jet flying at 900 km per hour will take 55 hours of flying to reach 50k mark.
50K is not easy - anyway you look at it. Remember this, if you are one of those stud cyclists pedalling Bangalore-Mysore and back every week, you will be doing approx 300km in a weekend. If you do that week on week for 52 weeks, you will hit only 15600km per year. That means you will take 3 years and 3 months almost to hit 50K.
I have shared in my previous blog the tip: daily cycling. The best way is cycle to work! This works especially well if you stay far away from office. Any big goal has to be broken down into something manageable. And we have to work on it relentlessly, day on day, month on month. But dont begin with something like 20km per day. If you are new to cycling, start cycling 2 km per day for a week. Then graduate to 4 per day for a week. And so on, based on your comfort. Over a period of 2 months, I believe that 40 km per day is easily achievable if you stay 20 km away from work.
Make cycling a habit - if you want to go to the nearby grocery shop or post office or whatever, just take the bike. Slowly this will become a habit and you will start cycling everywhere! And without even thinking consciously about it. And thats how the magic begins to happen. Slowly but surely. And the effects start compounding.
I highly recommend everyone to read the book "The COMPOUND Effect" by Darren Hardy. This man very clearly talks about what it takes to do what seems "impossible". The secret is daily routine, and doing it in manageable chunks. This is not a health book, but a book for organising yourself, in the category of "self-help". Dont snigger, one can never be too good to read this book. I found it out myself!
For example, he talks about how a 2 hr workout 5 days a week is not sustainable in the long run, at least for 99.9% of us. Because it is fundamentally a very tough thing - the momentum and enthusiasm slowly wanes away. 5 day work out slowly will turn into 3 and 2 day work outs and will eventually stop.
And then we tend to drop it completely. The best would be a 1 hour work out 3-4 times a week, max.
Please follow a similar approach when u start cycling. When we begin doing something, we tend to be over-enthusiastic and do it overly. When u begin something, keep a lifetime goal of continuing it - thats the sure shot way of success. Very very few of us can sustain a lifetime practice of 2 hour workout a day, 5 days a week. Cycling is far more simpler than that.
The key is consistence. It is far more effective to do something at a lesser rate (20 km per day), but maintaining it 365 days a year, rather than do superhuman stunts (like 250 km per day) once or twice or thrice a month.
20km per day is not big deal guys - you will do it in one hour. Will it happen automatically? No. Lets say u stay just 5km from office and u ride up and down to work. Thats 10 km. Once your are back home in the evening, if you are willing to switch off the idiot box and do some pedalling, you will enjoy it all the more! 10 km ride takes 30 mins. This is very very moderate rate, almost without any exertion at all.
I highly recommend you guys to read this book - this will help you not only beating my 50K, but in your life too. I have not read such a good book in a very long time. PERIOD. And I read a lot of books, mind you.
You can download a pdf of this book for just 12 USD. Check the net.
And after that, the tough part - put the stuff into practice and beat me to 1 lakh km!!
Hey, believe it or not, if I have inspired at least one person to really DO this, and beat me with any target (distance or time), I consider the purpose of this blog done.
Good luck to all cyclists.
Tuesday, February 08, 2011
Cycling: early memories
I used to be a child who was really afraid, especially of falling. And in as much as a cycle attracted me, the fear of falling prevented me from getting on the bike, inspite of having helpful uncles and cousins who would urge me on. Finally in 1984 summer, I gathered enough mettle with my maternal uncle (mom’s elder brother) to try a small cycle with two wheels. Not the kids variety, a proper cycle, mind you.
Day after day, my uncle tried in vain to get me going on the cycle. I would cry, shout, get scared the moment he indicated he would “leave” me. He got tired of running behind me, pushing and holding the bike. After the entire summer of 1984, sometime in May, I remember my uncle telling my mom that her son will never learn cycling. And my mom, sweetheart that she is, listened with almost tears in her eyes, to the possibility that her first son would never cycle. It used to be more of her dream and anyone else’s to see me on the bike. I felt bad that I disappointed her so much.
When I got back to 5th std, one of my classmates, a pretty girl by name Rani Peter used to come to school in a cycle. My god – in those days, it was a revelation. She was having army background and had come from delhi in 3rd standard. Now this dame cycling got me seriously jealous. Seriously. Those were the macho days – if a girl could do it, the guy has to, no questions about it.
After we moved to our new home in 1985, we had one of our neighbours who said he will give it a shot - to try and teach me pedaling. My mom explained to him how her brother had tried his best to get me going and how hopeless it was. This gentleman, by name Sunil did not budge. We rented a bike and went off to a nearby ground. In 30 minutes, I was cycling away as if I have been doing nothing else in my life but cycling!! With a joy that knew no limit, I cycled and came in front of my house and showed off to my mom. My friend Sunil thought that he had some “magic touch” that I learned it so fast. Afterwards, I saw him running behind a lot of kids on their bicycles – “teaching” them! ☺
Obviously all those hours with my uncle had gotten me to the very edge – just a little more push and I would have started cycling!! Morale: don’t give up. When the night is the darkest, the morning is near.
Recently, I told my uncle that I have more miles on my cycle than what his entire family had in their lifetimes. He was mighty proud! For a boy who was predicted to never learn cycling, this was indeed big. Very big. No wonder I relate big time to the movie Forrest Gump. For those of you who have not yet seen this classic, it is the story of a child by name Forrest, with weak legs, who goes on to become a high profile long distance runner, running coast to coast in the United States – for the sheer joy of it!
From 9th std onwards (circa 1989), I got permission to go to school on cycle. It was liberation! I can still close my eyes and picture those “first” days when I used to get out of that small road into bigger avenues. Before that it used to be trial runs on my dad’s bike, back and forth a 300m stretch of road in front of my house.
School days turned into those heady college days... and I score well enough in kerala state engineering entrance exam to gain a computer science seat in REC Rourkela, one of the hallowed places for engineering in this country. The college had a very huge campus - 640 acres - second only to IIT Kharagpur in area. I continued with pedaling while I was there. The huge campus kind of mandated it. The hostel itself was about a km away from the main buildings! It is a pity these days to see colleges in 20 acres - what a shame.
I used to participate in what was called "cross country" cycling while I was in REC. The most challenging part of the race was it started at 4:30 AM in the morning. I enjoyed every bit of it, though I never came in the first three. Almost 6 years of pedalling there - I have no clue how much distance would have been done, since I did not have a meter...
After those days came the days in Bangalore about which I have elaborated in the previous two posts.
Day after day, my uncle tried in vain to get me going on the cycle. I would cry, shout, get scared the moment he indicated he would “leave” me. He got tired of running behind me, pushing and holding the bike. After the entire summer of 1984, sometime in May, I remember my uncle telling my mom that her son will never learn cycling. And my mom, sweetheart that she is, listened with almost tears in her eyes, to the possibility that her first son would never cycle. It used to be more of her dream and anyone else’s to see me on the bike. I felt bad that I disappointed her so much.
When I got back to 5th std, one of my classmates, a pretty girl by name Rani Peter used to come to school in a cycle. My god – in those days, it was a revelation. She was having army background and had come from delhi in 3rd standard. Now this dame cycling got me seriously jealous. Seriously. Those were the macho days – if a girl could do it, the guy has to, no questions about it.
After we moved to our new home in 1985, we had one of our neighbours who said he will give it a shot - to try and teach me pedaling. My mom explained to him how her brother had tried his best to get me going and how hopeless it was. This gentleman, by name Sunil did not budge. We rented a bike and went off to a nearby ground. In 30 minutes, I was cycling away as if I have been doing nothing else in my life but cycling!! With a joy that knew no limit, I cycled and came in front of my house and showed off to my mom. My friend Sunil thought that he had some “magic touch” that I learned it so fast. Afterwards, I saw him running behind a lot of kids on their bicycles – “teaching” them! ☺
Obviously all those hours with my uncle had gotten me to the very edge – just a little more push and I would have started cycling!! Morale: don’t give up. When the night is the darkest, the morning is near.
Recently, I told my uncle that I have more miles on my cycle than what his entire family had in their lifetimes. He was mighty proud! For a boy who was predicted to never learn cycling, this was indeed big. Very big. No wonder I relate big time to the movie Forrest Gump. For those of you who have not yet seen this classic, it is the story of a child by name Forrest, with weak legs, who goes on to become a high profile long distance runner, running coast to coast in the United States – for the sheer joy of it!
From 9th std onwards (circa 1989), I got permission to go to school on cycle. It was liberation! I can still close my eyes and picture those “first” days when I used to get out of that small road into bigger avenues. Before that it used to be trial runs on my dad’s bike, back and forth a 300m stretch of road in front of my house.
School days turned into those heady college days... and I score well enough in kerala state engineering entrance exam to gain a computer science seat in REC Rourkela, one of the hallowed places for engineering in this country. The college had a very huge campus - 640 acres - second only to IIT Kharagpur in area. I continued with pedaling while I was there. The huge campus kind of mandated it. The hostel itself was about a km away from the main buildings! It is a pity these days to see colleges in 20 acres - what a shame.
I used to participate in what was called "cross country" cycling while I was in REC. The most challenging part of the race was it started at 4:30 AM in the morning. I enjoyed every bit of it, though I never came in the first three. Almost 6 years of pedalling there - I have no clue how much distance would have been done, since I did not have a meter...
After those days came the days in Bangalore about which I have elaborated in the previous two posts.
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