How Writing Has Helped My Bicycling

It’s Leap Day, 2024. Let’s jump right in. I have kept a journal for most of my life since being a young teen, encouraged by my maternal grandmother. There have been plenty of long gaps and since starting this blog in 2016, many days that I skipped both to work on my bicycle memoir. Writing is a way to express your feelings, and in a journal it’s private. Blogging is sometimes an online extension of that, depending how personal you want to get. Either way, helping to clarify thoughts, process emotions, outline goals, and refine motivation are all good for your health. Which in turn is both what one needs for any sustained exercise habit or practice and a benefit of the same. The fact that I’ve written a whole book (or two, since it’s too long–even as I try to revise it a third time, what it really needs is funding for an editor) is another way I’ve expressed myself, usually about all my biking. Sure, I could still ride a bike without writing, but both are entertwined and part of my daily do’s, and so far as I’m able to continue, I plan to and hope I will.

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Little Pleasures and Pains in the Life of a Bicyclist

If you ride your bicycle regularly, you may have noticed that lots of little stuff happens that probably doesn’t happen for people dependent on cars to get around.  Sometimes it’s big stuff, like you:  go on a long ride, compete in a race, get a new bike, set a personal best on that Strava segment.  The little stuff that goes on, while not as headline-worthy, is just as interesting, to me at least.  There is often more than meets the eye if one is willing to look deeper.  Let’s take a look at four things that happened to A Dude and find out.   

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