Bicycles and an extended lifespan.

Forever we've been told that mild and often exercise leads to better health and a longer life. Well, that pretty obviously works for me, but more and more I'm seeing the groups I ride with have quite the opposite cases. Increasing heart disease and they continue to ride too hard. Now I certainly have a great deal harder rides than I would classify as "mild" but when people are riding so hard that they have heart attacks or blow out heart valves you have to wonder what is going through their heads. I tried a heart rate monitor and my max rate of 140 and normal riding HR of 90 seems to be to me a great deal more sensible than people tagging 180 bpm at 78. Often without a warmup.

I used to have a rest heart rate of 20 bpm. This was so low that I would have to sit up and wait for my heart to come up to speed before I could stand up without falling down. Now that I'm not getting anywhere near the riding in, it is now up to a normal 70. I wonder if it will drop again after the lockdown and I start getting in the longer rides again.

Last year, after the most common group I rode with moved away o get out of
California, my riding dropped precipitously to 5,000 miles and 211,000 ft of climbing. With the lockdown, there were very few places to stop for a coffee or a **** break so it is now at 3,100 miles and only 103,000 feet of climbing. Whether or not I can ramp that up again at my age at the "Burn Your Mask Day" which is November 4th remains to be seen. I won't be pushing beyond my capabilities.

My Phoenix friend was bragging about doing 1,500 feet of climbing and I sure as hell couldn't think of where he would get that in. Finally he posted pictures and it appeared to be a 4-5% grade. That is how that group he rides with could think they were climbing. I don't even count as climbing anything that isn't pretty much double that on the climb except in the flat or mild areas. Only the steepest area around here is 16% but it is only a quarter of a mile long. In the North Bay there are some climbs that hit 24%. Now THAT is a climb. Though only less than a quarter of a mile. I took some climbing rides up there that I remembered as being killers and was rather surprised that they were no more than 10% From the Coast Highway (US 1) to Navato takes a 2 mile climb up to the "Cheese Factory" where they have fresh cheese for sale. Too bad it is all soft cheeses.

Riding down the other side you could ride down to the freeway and follow the bike trail back to the parking areas or you can turn up that 24% grade to knock 2 miles off of the length of the ride which by that time is approaching 50 miles.

I hope that everyone has a happy thanks giving. What do you do for Turkey out there John? Andre is going to have southern fried chicken and dumplings and write a Dante's Inferno poem-like treatise about it in tercets. Jay is going to cry all thanksgiving when it sinks in that Biden stands about as much chance of winning as he has of avoiding his advancing dementia. SMS will be able to afford a turkey while most of his electorate won't. That is why he will be successful - campaigning by bicycle makes them think that he is no better a financial position that he has forced upon them.