I'm a big fan of doing exercise that isn't something you loathe doing. I think this is a very important part of overall health that a lot of people get wrong. Exercise doesn't have to be this super-intense thing that you dread doing because it is so difficult. I feel like when I am considering the training that I am going to do that I should put myself into a kid's mindset and think about all the wild things we did when we were young because we wanted to do them not because of their calorie burn or because we were building muscle. This seems to be almost an exclusively adult notion.
Not all of what I do in the world of exercise is meant to make gains, but I still do record them on my fitness band anyway just to see what it says. Anything that uses more energy than sitting on the sofa is going to do you some good, and the other day I headed out with my bike to the suburbs and just rode around. I didn't have any destination in mind and I wasn't trying to get my heart rate up, I was just riding and trying to reminisce about how it was to ride around as a kid and see if you could run into any of your friends.
I didn't run into any friends but that is understandable since I am in my 40's and I don't know anyone that lives out this way.
I frequently complain about how there are too many people in Chicago and I still think this is true. But I will point out things that they have done well in this city because there aren't many of them. One of them is the extensive bicycle trails that they have and one of them leads all the way out to a suburb area that doesn't even feel like you are in the city anymore. This is where I spent an hour just "tooling around" for a while and honestly, it was a great way to relax.
I didn't go very far and I didn't go very fast. This was not the objective anyway. There was no real objective honestly and I simply wanted to get out of my busy part of town and enjoy some peace and quiet while just exploring. In the end there was only a couple of instances where I pushed it into anaerobic territory and I really don't even remember why I did that. It was probably to beat a light turning red.
Mostly I was in zone 1, which for most people means barely working at all. But there is a lot of information out there these days that suggests that this level of heart rate incline is actually really good for you and it is easy to maintain for long periods of time whereas if you are really pushing the limits you end up with potential for injury, hurt muscles, and also a feeling like you don't want to repeat that sort of activity for a while.
While some, perhaps most of the exercise that I do falls into a rather "intense" category, this day's activity was the opposite of that and I think I will start to do this more frequently. I don't think that fitness bands are all that accurate as far as caloric burn is concerned, but it does more than nothing and I like to see the output anyway. I figure if I can tool around for an hour and just enjoy the peace of a suburb for an hour and also earn two beers in the process, that is a worthwhile hour.
We aren't breaking any speed records here, but that wasn't the idea. I was just trying something new. The thing about cycling in the city center is that since there are so many people trying to use the trails at the same time, it can actually be quite stressful as you are constantly looking out for hazards and also trying to not be a hazard yourself at the same time.
While I was doing this I started to think about how in 20 years this might be some of the only activity that I am eligible for in the future. Since I am training almost entirely cardio these days, I am probably going to be more capable of fitness in my 60's and 70's than most other people are!
So if you have a bike and don't really know what to do in order to get some exercise, just know that you don't really need a plan. Just get out there and be a kid again. That was what I did yesterday and it was a lot of fun, it was easy, and I probably did a teensy bit of good for my legs and heart at the same time.