Cycling as a Way to Keep Fit
Have you ever had a bicycle? I am sure that 90 per cent of children have ever ridden a bike. But as they grow older they just leave it behind and forget about this amazing vehicle for the rest of their life. Why does it happen so? Most of the population is concentrated in cities where there is no place for cycling. So teenagers simply don’t have an opportunity to spin the pedals even if they want to. It is better to sit in a concrete cage with a tablet or a laptop.
It is a pity, that bikes are not so popular in Russia as they are abroad. They really help people keep fit and save their time. ‘Serious’ people drive, don’t they? That’s why we have so many cars and so few bikes in the cities.
I am not an exception. Our climate makes it impossible to cycle all year round, but in summer I do it nearly every day. I remember my first bike with its chain constantly coming off the rear cogwheel. I tried to grease it and to strain it, but nothing helped. Now I believe it was a design feature of that bike.
Modern bikes are much more comfortable and suitable for long distances. There is no need to maintain it during the whole season. My biking season starts when the snow melts and it gets warmer than 10 degrees. I check its technical state, change some spare parts and I am ready for a ride. The first distances are not very long, something around fifteen or twenty kilometres. They gradually increase and by the end of summer I normally ride 70 to 110 kilometres a day.
Spinning the pedals around may be a bit boring when you do it for several hours running, so I usually take a multimedia player with me and listen to the music or audiobooks.
Exploring new places is most interesting for me. Even when I take a ride on the same route, I notice the changes that take place in nature. And when I get to some new places which a car can’t reach, it’s simply exciting. I like to follow forest paths or cross the bottomless fields. And I always take photos of these remote nooks. The farther I get from the stuffy city, the better I feel. What will you feel, when you see a hare or a fox coming out of the dense forest and peering at you?
Quite often I go fishing by bike, too. The fishing tackles weigh around fifteen kilos, so it is a good way to train the muscles when I ride to the lake or to the river, which is 15 kilometres far from my country house. Sometimes I go even farther.
The peculiarity of cycling as a kind of sport is that it trains all the groups of muscles. It is especially good for your lungs and heart. So I can recommend riding a bike to everyone as the best option when you choose what to take up in summer. I have been cycling for more than five years and I am going to set new personal records and cover longer distances in the future.
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