I have been quite pleased with my activity ever since acquiring my $200 single gear bicycle but I have noticed something lately: The ride is getting to be too easy and I may have to mix it up a bit since I don't really feel tired after my circuit and I like to feel tired afterwards. I suppose I could always go and do the trail a second time but I don't know if that is the solution either.
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I read an article recently entitled how a single gear bike could be your ultimate commute vehicle and I agree with basically everything they say there about how it is a bicycle that needs almost zero maintenance and you don't have to really stay on your toes when riding it because there's really nothing to pay attention to. This is particularly true on the cycling lanes they have here where I live. There is absolutely no reason to have 21 gears or more because you are not going to be able to move fast enough to use all of them. The cycling lanes here are great, but because we have millions of people in this city there are always a bunch of people on the cycling lanes. If you try to hit high speeds you are going to be a hazard. This is part of the reason why I don't think I am getting as much exercise as I would like to have in my nearly daily rides.
I will admit that I stopped a couple of times on this ride but it wasn't because I was tired, it was because there were groups of people cycling together that were blocking the path and being jerks about sharing the road. It wouldn't bother me at all if there were to be some sort of policing on these bike paths to remind people that there is an etiquette that is expected of people and if you are blocking the entire bike path you are a nuisance. There's too many people here for you to be treating the bike lanes as if they were your personal playground.
By the time I finished I suppose it was a good thing that I didn't go further because we had an out of nowhere rainstorm descend on us but it is summertime here and I was already really hot so getting soaked wouldn't really bother me that much. My only worry would be potential rust formation on the bike when I store it wet. That's something I should consider for the future because I have had bikes that I kind of destroyed in the past. But this is another reason why single gear bikes are great, there really isn't that much to replace if you do let something get all rusty.
You can see here that I was never really able to accomplish any sort of real speed and this was because it was near 5pm and I live in a metro area. If I want to avoid that I am going to have to start going in the middle of the afternoon when the kids are in school and the parents are at work. That way it will be just me and the criminals on the bike path and outrunning the criminals would probably be one hell of a workout.
I broke my routine the other day and went for a run/walk/jog instead one day and noticed that maintaining a higher BPM for my heartrate was considerably easier by doing that. Getting my heartrate up to 150 on these bike rides is quite difficult, I do that effortlessly when jogging. So perhaps I am going to have to mix things up in the not too distant future and do some cycling and running on alternate days. When I do either of these things the objective is to have a heartrate above 140 for a prolonged period of time but on the bike paths here, that is difficult to accomplish because of all the people. I refuse to ride stationary bikes so I am going to have to find another solution.
In the meantime I am still happy I bought this bike because it is nice to have as an option for a workout.