Sunday, January 30, 2011

Unicycling in the Snow

I've been putting on weight, and watching what I eat hasn't helped (mainly because I've been watching myself eat a lot of late snacks). I decided to start exercising again.

For years, when we lived in Manhattan and even more after we moved to Brooklyn, I used to unicycle many miles a week. At the maximum, when I was living in Prospect Park South in Brooklyn and working out of my mom's apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, I rode 27 miles a day at least three (and usually ) fou
r days a week. But when we moved to New Paltz, my riding diminished initially to 4 miles a day and then, about a year ago, to almost zero. Almost unthinkably, there are days when I don't ride even one block.



In 2007, I signed up for a unicycle race across Nova Scotia, and after months of training, my pals and I rode about 170-180 miles each over a span of 5 days in the summer of '08. A few months after my return (and after recovering from various aches and pains including tendinitis in two different spots), I rode 89 miles on a September day, but I didn't ride a lot after that because a few months earlier, I'd bought my Smart Car. It's so small that I never have to search for parking spaces more than a block or two from my work, which means I can get out of the car and walk rather than ride.



A few weeks ago, this lack of action and increase in snacking brought about a scary sight on my scale: 185. When I turned 40, I decided to monitor my food really carefully and, aided by light exercise, I was able to drop from a high of 197 to about 165. I never want to see 190 again, and I'd really like to dip back under 170. With that in mind, I took to the trail. I rode our rode up and down our snowy road five times this morning and then, this afternoon, another three times. I thought it was about a half-mile each way, but according to an app that measures distance, it weighed in about about a third of a mile. All told, I rode about 6 miles today.

I'm going to keep this up as long as I can and see how it all goes.

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