Bike to Work Month: 3 Wins in 5 Years
My employer has had "bike to work" month six years in a row.
In July 2015, I won "most total miles" with 232.7 miles over 13 commutes.
In June 2018, I won "most total miles" with 250.6 miles over 14 commutes.
In August 2019, I won "most total miles" with 305.0 miles over 17 commutes. This is a little than 17.9 miles per commute because one day I took a slight detour on the way home.
I destroyed the competition; nobody else cleared 200 miles. As always, I couldn't compete in "total rides" with the people who live 1/2 a mile from the office, but given that I rode on 17 of a possible 22 days I'm ok with this. I missed two for appointments ( Tribe game and Lion King) and three for threatened bad weather. For all this I win some kind of fancy Bluetooth bike speaker that I will probably never use.
In doing so, I set three personal records.
- I shattered my record for the best month of August. The previous record was August 2017 with 214.7 miles over 12 commutes.
- The 305 miles / 17 commutes was actually my best single month ever, decisively breaking a three way tie between June 2018, September 2017 and October 2015.
- At one point I rode to work on nine consecutive business days, breaking the old record of eight set in late September and early October of 2017.
Of course, this all came at a cost. As with 2018, I consciously chose to favor biking over CrossFit, since I can't do both anymore due to schedule changes at the box. I basically only went to CrossFit on bad weather dates or a few Saturdays. This leads to an interesting question: if I can only do one, which one should I do?
For biking, it's low impact and is less likely to leave me sore, gets me outside, saves money on gas, is better for the environment, and thanks to the mileage involved impresses people more. Of course, it sucks up a bunch of time, and while it is great for my legs and my cardio, it doesn't do much for the rest of my body, and I'm still paying for my Crossfit membership when I don't use it.
For CrossFit, it's a MUCH better total body workout, and because I like the people I work out with it provides a social outlet I don't otherwise get. It also occasionally exhausts me, requires a drive to the box (even if I had time to bike there after walking the dogs, there's a good chance I'd be too exhausted to bike back), and is expensive.
Looking at it strictly from an environmental perspective, it makes more sense to bike. That's also true from a financial perspective, but only if I cancelled my CrossFit membership altogether.
Looking at it from a workout perspective, CrossFit wins in a landslide. This is also true from a social perspective.
What will most likely happen is that I'll keep focusing on the bike until I get to 1000 miles for the year (I'm 2/3 of the way there for 2019) and do CrossFit the rest of the time. That's not a terrible compromise. I do think about the environmental aspect a great deal, but I also fly commercial, which undoes all the good from biking and then some. As is typical, there are no easy answers.
In almost completely unrelated news, there is a pair of peregrine falcons living under a bridge I bike over on the way home, and I've seen them several times in the last few days perching on lampposts overlooking the valley. This is very, very cool. Many thanks to the bird nerds I've seen out there with cameras for verifying the species for me.
In July 2015, I won "most total miles" with 232.7 miles over 13 commutes.
In June 2018, I won "most total miles" with 250.6 miles over 14 commutes.
In August 2019, I won "most total miles" with 305.0 miles over 17 commutes. This is a little than 17.9 miles per commute because one day I took a slight detour on the way home.
I destroyed the competition; nobody else cleared 200 miles. As always, I couldn't compete in "total rides" with the people who live 1/2 a mile from the office, but given that I rode on 17 of a possible 22 days I'm ok with this. I missed two for appointments ( Tribe game and Lion King) and three for threatened bad weather. For all this I win some kind of fancy Bluetooth bike speaker that I will probably never use.
In doing so, I set three personal records.
- I shattered my record for the best month of August. The previous record was August 2017 with 214.7 miles over 12 commutes.
- The 305 miles / 17 commutes was actually my best single month ever, decisively breaking a three way tie between June 2018, September 2017 and October 2015.
- At one point I rode to work on nine consecutive business days, breaking the old record of eight set in late September and early October of 2017.
Of course, this all came at a cost. As with 2018, I consciously chose to favor biking over CrossFit, since I can't do both anymore due to schedule changes at the box. I basically only went to CrossFit on bad weather dates or a few Saturdays. This leads to an interesting question: if I can only do one, which one should I do?
For biking, it's low impact and is less likely to leave me sore, gets me outside, saves money on gas, is better for the environment, and thanks to the mileage involved impresses people more. Of course, it sucks up a bunch of time, and while it is great for my legs and my cardio, it doesn't do much for the rest of my body, and I'm still paying for my Crossfit membership when I don't use it.
For CrossFit, it's a MUCH better total body workout, and because I like the people I work out with it provides a social outlet I don't otherwise get. It also occasionally exhausts me, requires a drive to the box (even if I had time to bike there after walking the dogs, there's a good chance I'd be too exhausted to bike back), and is expensive.
Looking at it strictly from an environmental perspective, it makes more sense to bike. That's also true from a financial perspective, but only if I cancelled my CrossFit membership altogether.
Looking at it from a workout perspective, CrossFit wins in a landslide. This is also true from a social perspective.
What will most likely happen is that I'll keep focusing on the bike until I get to 1000 miles for the year (I'm 2/3 of the way there for 2019) and do CrossFit the rest of the time. That's not a terrible compromise. I do think about the environmental aspect a great deal, but I also fly commercial, which undoes all the good from biking and then some. As is typical, there are no easy answers.
In almost completely unrelated news, there is a pair of peregrine falcons living under a bridge I bike over on the way home, and I've seen them several times in the last few days perching on lampposts overlooking the valley. This is very, very cool. Many thanks to the bird nerds I've seen out there with cameras for verifying the species for me.