How do I go from a 3x/week commuter to 5x/week?

[Raymo853]

@consularrider 88542 wrote:

I guess you think like Yoda, “Do or do not, there is no try,” or “Already know that which you need.” Seriously though, you tell yourself you are going to ride, you get as much ready as possible the night before – that way you are at least halfway committed and you save prep time in the morning. Then if something interfers with the ride, so be it.

I believe culimerc sort of follows your pattern having to ride both east and west depending on the day. When I started bike commuting in 2007, my target was to ride 80 to 90% of my work days. I had just come from a job where I lived less than a mile from work and had walked in 100% of the time and walked home about 75% of the time. Since I was already out of the habit of driving, it was easier to commit to cycling, and as a one car family, my other option was Metro which between walking to EFC and the ride in, took at least as long as the bike ride.

Just remember Yoda was in charge during the fall of the Republic and failed too do anything effective to stop that.

[kcb203]

Thanks for all the advice. A little more detail. In addition to biking, I also swim 3x a week, lift weights once a week, and run a couple times a week. The days I’m least eager to ride in are those where I already swam or lifted in the morning. Today, for example, I went to the gym at 6, and when I got ready to leave home at 7:30, my legs were tired already. I get plenty of sleep–in bed by 10 every night.

Perhaps I do think of my commute as Cat6 racing. Not so much on the days into DC, where I JRA due to the inherent slowness of the Custis and my 15 blocks on city streets (except for hammering the uphills on the way home). But on the days to Reston, I do think of it as my bike training most days, so unless I’m ready to go hard, I feel like I’m wasting energy that should be saved for a real training session. (I’m riding up Mt. Washington this summer and really need to get bike fitness like I’ve never had before.)

Logistically, the bike commute works for me. On the 3-4 days a week I’m in Reston, I’ve got a gym with towel service and a permanent locker to store toiletries, shoes, belt, pants, etc. In DC, I have to bring everything every day, but it all fits into my backpack.

It’s not an issue of my waking time. I’m up naturally between 5:30 and 6 without an alarm. I usually don’t leave for work until 7:50 on the DC days and 7:40 on the Reston days to be showered at my desk at 9. Four days out of five during the week, I’m doing another workout before even heading out the door. When I’m late, it’s not for oversleeping but just spending too much time at the pool or gym.

[sethpo]

@Bill Hole 88574 wrote:

You could do what I did – wreck your car and not bother to replace it.

We’re a one-car family now so it’s bike or Metro, and I’d much rather bike.

Ha. I was thinking the same thing. Do what the Vikings did and burn your boats (or at least hide the spark plugs).

Honestly, I don’t have any practical advice but somehow over the last year this just happened for me and now when I can’t ride and am forced to metro I feel horrible mentally and physically. It’s a strange addiction but man is the habit strong. I hate not bike commuting FAR more than any cycling obstacles.

Maybe you should cut out all that other gym silliness and just commit exclusively to the bike. It’s a powerful master and willing partner. Also, shave your legs.

[cvcalhoun]

You’ve said why you don’t bike every day, but why do you want to bike every day? There is actually nothing wrong with biking 3 times a week, and by doing so (especially with all those other activities), you’re still getting a lot more exercise than the average person. However, if you have goals that make it desirable to do more than that, focus on those goals. Do you want to lose weight? Train for an event? Get the strength so that more of your non-commuting trips can be by bicycle rather than car? Limit your carbon footprint? Only by thinking through and focusing on what the positives are for you will you be able to overcome the negatives.

The other thing to recognize is that the more you exercise, the more “bad days” you will have, just by the law of averages. (You’ll also have more “good days.”) So focus on just getting out there every day, instead of beating yourself up for those days you are slower than usual, or not able to “go hard.”

[Emm]

Leave all your work clothes at work, or at least all the good ones. That did it for me. Once or twice in the AM when it was raining I had to make the call between biking in (and then showering and getting dressed), or showing up in jeans and changing. I found it easier to bike in than deal with the weird looks my coworkers would give me if I showed up in jeans on a Tuesday…

Also, if you’re competitive, find a friend who is almost as much of a bad-ass than you, and then focus on being more of a bad-ass than them via biking. My fiancee always harps on me about needing to bike more, and being a wimp. So I bike in thunderstorms to and from work when he chickens out just to out-bad-ass him.

[rcannon100]

@sethpo 88590 wrote:

Maybe you should cut out all that other gym silliness and just commit exclusively to the bike. It’s a powerful master and willing partner. Also, shave your legs.

No no no. You cant do that! According to our forum patron saint Sir Tim, you must also engage in weight training.

Of course, for some of us, that involves lifting puppies, taking out the garbage, moving the furniture, taking the whatever up and down the stairs, moving piles of yard refuge, doing the laundry, moving bags of cement to repair a fence, mowing the lawn, repairing whatever the teenager broke last week. I laughed all weekend, sweat pouring down my forehead, as I moved a truck load of mulch from the curb to the backyard – thinking of how I was complying with Sir Tim’s saged wisdom.

It’s kinda like the bumper sticker “Can your Treadmill Get You To Work?” –> “Can your gym weight training rebuild a flower bed?”

[dkel]

Just *reading* this thread is making me tired!

Still looking forward to my ride home, though. That says it all.

[dasgeh]

@kcb203 88589 wrote:

Thanks for all the advice. A little more detail. In addition to biking, I also swim 3x a week, lift weights once a week, and run a couple times a week. The days I’m least eager to ride in are those where I already swam or lifted in the morning.

Have you considered consciously choosing some commutes to be JRA and others (some or all of the Reston days) to be true training? You would not do another workout before those bike-commute-workout days, and potentially extend the bike commute to be the workout length you’re looking for. Then on JRA-commute days, you’d do a swim/run work out first, and intentially hold back from Cat6-ing the ride, so it’s just easy. You could think of these days as Dutch-bike-riding days (or just ride a slower bike, if your N>1) – sit up, smell the roses, let the roadies pass you because you’re already been a bad ass in the pool/on the track…

[Geoff]

@dasgeh 88600 wrote:

Have you considered consciously choosing some commutes to be JRA

What’s JRA?
Google suggests Japan Racing Association and other equally likely candidates.

[cyclingfool]

@Geoff 88602 wrote:

What’s JRA?
Google suggests Japan Racing Association and other equally likely candidates.

JRA=Just riding along.

[sethpo]

@dasgeh 88600 wrote:

Have you considered consciously choosing some commutes to be JRA and others (some or all of the Reston days) to be true training? You would not do another workout before those bike-commute-workout days, and potentially extend the bike commute to be the workout length you’re looking for. Then on JRA-commute days, you’d do a swim/run work out first, and intentially hold back from Cat6-ing the ride, so it’s just easy. You could think of these days as Dutch-bike-riding days (or just ride a slower bike, if your N>1) – sit up, smell the roses, let the roadies pass you because you’re already been a bad ass in the pool/on the track…

I think there’s actually a case to be made to use the bike rides as zone 2 training to increase the overall aerobic capacity. I’m no expert, but there’s certainly a lot of good info out there on this.

[Geoff]

@cyclingfool 88603 wrote:

JRA=Just riding along.

Thanks. My next guess was going to be Jealous Reactionary Agoraphobes.

[hozn]

We could meet up some morning. I am usually headed to Reston (from Westover) around 6:15, but can (and do) often leave earlier. Meeting people can be useful motivation! I usually drive in on Mondays and leave the car at work for logistics and ability to bail if bad thunderstorms, but otherwise try to ride daily (so effectively 4x/wk). Once or twice a week I meet folks for 6am rides and stretch the commute out; I do almost no riding on the weekends (baby+toddler) so I want to get a decent volume in during the week.

I don’t think it is important to ride every day unless you really want to. I am happier on the bike, but driving is very convenient and there is no traffic (when I would leave). If I do drive, I usually use that as an excuse to go mountain biking in Lake Fairfax or do a lunch ride in Reston instead. I use the commute for exercise, though occasionally I deliberately take it easy — like tomorrow — and use my HRM to keep tabs on that. I don’t know about this JRA thing … cycling is always fairly deliberate for me.

[oldbikechick]

+1 for preparing the panniers the night before (although for me that was less for motivation and more for not forgetting something essential).
+1 for riding even when feeling crummy and realizing that as soon as I leave home/office and get into fresh air, I feel much better. 9 times out of 10 riding the bike makes me feel better.
+1 for biking being preferable to the alternative. I hate riding metro and when I bail and ride the metro, I always regret it.

The challenge is if the alternative is not so bad. The alternative to my previous bike commute was a drive that was shorter than my bike ride and I had free parking. Plus, my bike commute was kind of lame, along a busy road choked with stop and go traffic and lots of fumes and capped by a very steep hill to get to my office building. It was hard to motivate for that. What I ended up doing was finding a different route and that was a game-changer. With just slightly more distance, I had a fabulously picturesque commute through farms (horses! sunflowers! stone hedges!), a 500- year old village, and if conditions were right, I would come around a corner and see glacier-capped Mont Blanc in the distance. That route was worth getting up earlier and making the additional effort to bike.

[PotomacCyclist]

@rcannon100 88595 wrote:

No no no. You cant do that! According to our forum patron saint Sir Tim, you must also engage in weight training.

Of course, for some of us, that involves lifting puppies, taking out the garbage, moving the furniture, taking the whatever up and down the stairs, moving piles of yard refuge, doing the laundry, moving bags of cement to repair a fence, mowing the lawn, repairing whatever the teenager broke last week. I laughed all weekend, sweat pouring down my forehead, as I moved a truck load of mulch from the curb to the backyard – thinking of how I was complying with Sir Tim’s saged wisdom.

It’s kinda like the bumper sticker “Can your Treadmill Get You To Work?” –> “Can your gym weight training rebuild a flower bed?”

Strength training is good, but it doesn’t need to be done year-round. And it doesn’t need to be done in a gym. You can do a decent set of bodyweight exercises outside or in your home. Weights do make some exercises easier to do but people find ways to work on strength, core stability and agility without using weights. Olympic gymnasts do mostly bodyweight exercises, from what I hear over and over in interviews. They incorporate some weight training but it only supplements the other stuff. Most of us don’t need anywhere close to that level of strength or agility. It’s pretty easy to do a few bodyweight exercises one or two times a week, and not year-round. Some quick routines can take just 5 to 10 minutes. One set is enough for basic health and strength. (Football players and bodybuilders should do more, but this isn’t a football forum.)

As for the cycling routine, a good general rule for any sort of physical activity is to proceed gradually. Increase the frequency or the distance or the intensity, but not all at the same time, and not every single week. If 3 bike commutes a week is comfortable, then try 4 times and see how that goes. Get comfortable with that for a few weeks before trying 5 days a week. It’s also OK to cut back when you feel like it. Maybe there’s a lightning storm, or you worked very long hours. Just try to keep some physical activity in your routine most weeks of the year.

[Author]

Posts