Cycling to work
I started doing this a few months ago, rather irregularly at first and now almost daily. Before I start talking about it, let me just make it clear that I am not preaching. I don’t think everyone should cycle to work, I don’t think that if we all cycle to work the baby seals will be finally able to rest assured of their salvation and I especially don’t think you should do anything just because *I* said it’s a good idea. That disclaimer being out there… you should at least consider it.
Main points of my argument:
- Fastest way to get in to work
Faster than walking, driving, TFL or taking the Thames Clippers. While this may or may not be necessarily true for you, even if you do live in London, it’s worth checking out this Top Gear race, just to get an idea of how much quicker this can be, even on large distances.
- Cheapest way to get in to work
TFL/Riverbus would cost you in the range of £100-120 per month. The cost of owning a car is something I have previously talked about and it’s monumentally more expensive. I believe that just the fuel for commuting (assuming you already own the car for other reasons) would be more expensive, but I don’t feel like doing the math now.
Cycling requires a minimal investment. You can get a pretty good brand new commuter bike for £100-200 and an awesome bike for double that. Maintenance is cheap and you don’t have to do it often. Also, a bike will stay with you for a good number of years if you take proper care of it so the investment will balance out over time.
Finally, in the UK, there’s the Cycle to work program which – if your employer is participating – will save you taxes on the bike cost and will allow you to pay for it over 12 months.
- Healthiest way to get in to work
It’s guaranteed exercise twice a day. Why do treadmill/rowing/stationary cardio in a crowded sweaty gym when you can cycle to work. Come Saturday, I’ve done at least 5 hrs of cardio that week. It’s the first time I’m able to say this with certainty since I was a kid.
- Works better than caffeine
I find that it actually wakes me up in the morning enough that I don’t feel the same need for an energy boost anymore. More importantly, it clears my head when I head back home, so I don’t have to drag all that baggage from work in my home with me.
Holy cycling manatees, have we uncovered the holy grail of transportation?
OKAY, there are a few downsides.
- Your commute time activity is cycling. That’s it.
It’s possible that you already had a certain something that you did to kill the commute time (reading, coding etc.). You’ll have to fit that somewhere else in your schedule now, sorry. But before you even start thinking about that, ask yourself if that something was more important than your overall health? WELL?!
- You may be late for a while.
It may take you longer than it should for the first one-two months, until you build up your cardio. To be honest though, that should really make you happy — it means your cardio sucks now and will get better.
- Weather.
The following three conditions have strong potential for ruining the experience:
Extreme heat, cold or rain. You can mostly work with rain and you can suit up pretty well for cold, but the summer heat in some places is quite unbearable. Can’t help with that one, but if you’re living in London, you really only need to worry about the rain.
- YMMV.
You may be unable to cycle for whatever reason. You may live too far from your workplace for this to be a genuine opportunity. Your traffic may suck. If drivers hate you (Bucharest and Washington, I’m staring right at you), it may not be the best experience. That said, I have friends who cycle to work in both those places and are quite happy with it also.
You may have no place to put your bike (talk to your employer though! They may be happy to accommodate, everyone likes healthy energetic employees and the cost of a bike rack is well worth that).
Wrap-up:
I’m not saying everyone should cycle to work. I mean hey, if you start doing it, it will probably become unpleasantly crowded, just like car traffic. But I think it’s something well worth trying and could make a lot of people happy. Don’t believe me? Just look how happy the Mayor is:
Now sing along with me…
Exercise and Fitness on Stack Exchange
If you’ve ever used StackOverflow or any of the related StackExchange websites, you most probably know how great they work for Q&A purposes, especially for domains where beginners tend to ask the same questions over and over again and where determining which advice is good and which users to trust is incredibly difficult.
Briefly, the StackExchange platform allows for votes on both answers, questions and comments, it is entirely community moderated and permissions come with increasing reputation. You get reputation by asking good questions and giving good answers. Once your reputation increases, you get various moderation rights, starting with the basic voting capability to the point where you can edit everything on the website. Common topics get turned into community wikis where everyone can contribute for creating a database of knowledge.
The proposal for an “Exercise and Fitness” stack exchange website has been suggested a while ago and the project is now in “Commitment” phase, meaning that people need to commit (essentially promise that they are interested in the website and will be fairly active when it comes online). Once enough people have commited, the project will launch in Beta and the process can begin.
If this is something you think you will be interested in, follow this link to commit and help make it happen.
Common drug misconceptions
I know that the“Season of the Fall” is here because the entire “cold remedy” section in the supermarket was simply EMPTY last week. The fruit section on the other hand was doing okay… *head desk*
I find it amazing that although everyone knows there is no cure to the “common cold’, people still think and refer to most cold remedy drugs as “cures”. Allow me to take a moment to tell you how you’re doing it wrong. Read more
Bodyfat percentage with pictures
I think this is a great little article to help one understand what bodyfat percentages actually mean or “look like”. It also implicitly shows how low BF confers the muscular look many people are looking for. Check it out.
PS: thanks Serban for the link
How to prevent super-bugs (medical, not software)
Norway does it right. How?
Read it here.
It’s almost disturbing that solutions like this have been explained, tested and proposed for years, but are still being ignored. Thumbs up for Norway!
