teresamichele

Hello! I just stumbled onto this site when I was looking for information on biking. I'm 5'4 and 280 so I was VERY excited when I saw this forum!

I was using a treadmill at the gym but I keep having issues with my Achilles - I've had tendonitis in both feet, and it was bad enough on the right foot to require surgery.

I went to the the gym Monday and used the treadmill and the pain in my feet came back. I was very discouraged because I'm strong enough to work out, but my feet can't handle it! A friend suggested biking so I ended up here.

I'm going to try a stationary bike tonight. I know it's not as good as "the real thing" but it'll work for now. My main concern is that when I've tried it before, it made my rear end hurt! I guess that will get better. I really hope so!

Anyway - I was wondering how other people got started? Were you excited at first, or nervous? Any advice?

10 Wheels

I got started on a $15 used bike.
Takes some riding and adjustments to get used to the seat, handle bars, and pedals.
Ride as much as you can. Rest when you need to.
One becomes strong very quickly the more you ride..

MrClyde

I started on my 10 year old Walmart mountain bike. Rode that until things started to break. My first ride was about 3 miles, and my wife thought I was crazy for going that far.

I had a similar start. I wanted to exercise, but couldn't jog much because of discomfort and pain. Biking is fun, and good for you.

magohn

November 2009, I picked up an old road bike for $2 on a yard sale - rode that for awhile (very small distances < 1 mile ), then I dug out my 20yr old mountain bike and rode that for a couple hundred miles (longer distances < 15 mile) - couple of months later I purchased a 2010 Roubaix and love it (distances < 50 miles or so).

My toughest rides were definitely on the mountain bike - one 15 miler laid me up for two days....

EKW in DC

I had an old big box mountain bike from high school days. I hadn't ridden it much after getting my drivers license, save for a summer during college when I was here in DC and rode to get groceries and in the morning for some exercise. Got rid of that bike during Peace Corps and after returning stateside, I eventually got the cheapest Trek hybrid at the LBS. Had that bike several months and rode occasionally on weekends until it was stolen from my locked garage.

My real foray into cycling began last year. Money was really tight, but I managed to scrape together a little dough and with some donations to the "Buy Me a Bike Fund" as Xmas gifts in 2008, I finally got a new bike again last year. I had recently quit smoking and just gotten married, so a whole host of life changes were going on, and I found an outlet on the bike. I rode a couple times on weekends before I decided to try riding to my office ont time on a Sunday. It was an easier ride than I thought it would be, so I started bike commuting almost all the time. Now no work day seems complete unless there's a 7 mile bike ride before work and a 7 mile bike ride after!

This site has helped me learn a tremendous amount and feel more a part of the general cycling world/community. I am now doing some pedicab driving and am also active at a local bike coop. I commute ~3,000 miles a year and hope to do some touring this summer, too.

If you're like me, watch out, because the cycling bug can be really infectious!

CACycling

September 2007, right around my 48th birthday, I had given my 10 year old MTB to my oldest son. He'd outgrown his bike and mine wasn't beeing used. Gave it some additional thought and decided I wanted to have a bike available in case I ever got the itch to ride with the family.

Found a beater MTB on Craig's List for $40 and bought it. Started doing an overhaul on it and remembered how much I enjoyed working on bikes when I was a kid. Working on it led to test rides. Which led to more work and more test rides. Eventually, the test rides turned into 5 mile rides 3 or 4 times a week. Then my wife started coming along on her comfort bike and the distance and frequency grew.

6 months and 1,000 miles later, I picked up an old road bike (hadn't been on one of those in 30 years!) and fixed it up. That led to getting my wife an old road bike and our distances were now over 20 miles on a regular basis. That led to new road bikes and lots of cycling gear.

Three years ago, if you'd have told me I'd be heading out in full kit on a $2,000 bike for a Saturday morning ride I'd have laughed in your face. Now, I can't imagine why it took me so long to fall back in love with the freedom of cycling.

muz379

wow well i started off about 18months ago with a £45($65) heavy slow used hyrbrid i bought off ebay .
Main main use for it was commuting to the gym which was at the time about a mile and a half from where i was living , soon realised i wasnt much of a gym person and apart from the weights machines the other cardio equipment really wasnt appealing to me bar the rowing machine which i had at home at the time anyway . treadmills i really didnt enjoy and almost always would end up with a bad knee or ankle the day after going on one for any period of time over 10mins .

Soon realised that the part i enjoyed most was the ride to the gym , trying to make it faster each time i went , started taking alternate routes to make the journey a bit longer so figured i would save the money on the gym membership and start just going out cycling instead . soon realised it was a real joy for me so invested in some decent cycling cloths and gear in the money id saved from the gym memberships
Started off with short rides , doing maybe 2 or 3 mile rides , soon started looking at ways of making the hybrid faster , started off on the tyres replacing the huge 700X42 tyres with some skinnier 32's saw a good speed increase there , then realised there wasnt a lot i could do by way of improvements to this so ditched it in the shed using it occasionally for shorter commuting rides and bought myself an old steel road bike , was heavy but still lighter than the hybrid , soon ditched the tyres for some 700X23's fitted spd pedals and upgraded the wheels for lighter more modern wheels and started using that to train as i did all of this the miles where increasing to 5 to 10 mile rides twice a week and a 20-25 mile ride at the weekend
now im riding a relatively new aluminium road bike with a carbon fork and routinely doing 10miles twice to three times in the week plus 40miles+ each weekend training for a 60mile ride in july for a charity and then depending on how that goes my first century ride in september .
Im pushed in this training though as my training partner for these rides is a non clyde who can keep up and even compete with my speed on my old hybrid so ive gotta give that little bit extra just to keep up which ive found is suiting me well and helping me build fitness faster than id ever expect to
my weight loss so far isnt that great only about 14lbs but i know its coming off and im in no rush to get rid of it all but i do feel so much fitter and healthier

In terms of the bike hurting the rear my advice would be to try some padded undershorts or other type of padded cycling bottoms , i really havent looked back since getting my first pair of padded bottoms and now when i ride without padding i really can there isnt any

If youd have told me back then that id be spending almost every piece of disponsable income on various cycling related products i would have said you where loosing your marbles but now i literally will spend every spare penny on bicycle related stuff now

I will say one thing if you ever need support , advice or even just motivation the guys in this forum are all more than nice , and very good with the advice , a lot of it bourne out of their own experiences . Even on the stupid days when you make a stupid decision and crash your bike as i did

teresamichele

You guys are awesome! Thank you SO much for the feedback!

I did go to the gym and I did 4 miles in about 20 minutes on a setting of 5 (out of 20). I think I'll leave it there for this week (planning on going Thursday and Friday as well), and then next week move to 6 and go from there. I'm more worried about the difficulty than the speed, as long as I don't start getting slower.

Summers here are dangerously hot (especially if you're out of shape) so I think I'll stay indoor for now, and work on my endurance on that bike.

I also did arm weights, sit ups, reverse sit ups, and a TON of stretching. I feel hopeful for the first time in a LONG time. After all the problems with my feet, this could be how I can finally work my body without damaging it!

My 29th birthday is 9/25 - my goal is to be down 30 lbs by then. I can do it!

BikeFoz

I was thinking about something similar to this today during lunch. I've started and stopped riding a few times over the past 10 years. I'm not sure exactly why but I've hindsight working for me a little in guessing why.

When I first got the bug I was in my early 20s and bought a mongoose hybrid type bike from Sports Authority. I was excited to ride. Then I did. It was hard. Teeny tiny hills defeated me easily. It wasn't much fun. The brakes squealed badly. I was disappointed. I rode a few times before giving it away a year later.

A few years later I got the bug again; This time I bought a Trek 7.2 FX hybrid. I went in knowing that riding a bike wasn't quite "easy." I was happy with the Trek; it rode smooth and quiet. I upgraded the seat and got clipless A520 spd pedals. I probably only rode it 400 miles or so before I tailed off. I rode solo and it wasn't much fun. Sold it since I wasn't using it.

Ended up buying an Electra 3-spd cruiser and loved riding that down to the beach. Then I rode it to work and thought I can't do that regularly with a cruiser so I bought a used Specialized rigid mountain bike circa early 90s to ride to work. Then bought a Fuji Cross Comp to ride for fitness on weekends; along with new tires, seats, clothes, tools, pedals, shoes, etc etc etc...

I'm mainly riding for fitness and fun. I'm hoping to stick with it long term as I really do like it. So, I'm looking into riding with a local club to provide some routine and structure to help prevent the solo boredom from setting in. I ride my cruiser with my dog. I'm just trying to mix it up to keep it fun and not turn it into an exercise "chore."

As for advice, each person is different. For me I like having a nice bike(s) that function flawlessly that make me smile when I look at it sitting in the garage as well as when I'm riding along (I routinely do that.)

Good luck and stick with it.

Tom Stormcrowe

Here's how I got started. Note, I'm riding with oxygen, here.



This was last year at Tour de Cure.



This photo spread range covers March 2005 to June 2009.

muz379

wow a picture really does say a thousand words here

cyclist2000

I have ridden all of my life. It started when my sister was running beside me holding my bike up as I tried to learn to balance, then I said something to her and she was half a block back. I crashed into a hedge of thorn bushes. I was hooked. I think I was 5 then

I was a wrench at a bike shop in high school, and since that time I have been addicted to bikes. I now stable has grown to 9.75 bikes, what I am missing is a titanium frame. I wrench on all my own bikes, and have built up 7 of my 9 bikes, I find this very theraputic.

As for the sore rear end, it will happen, but don't let that discourage you. Everyone new to riding will get a sore rear. After the rear gets conditioned, you will be able to do longer rides without pain. Good cycling shorts help a lot. You already have a goal, that helps a lot. My goal is to do two week long tours this year so I need to get in cycling shape to made it enjoyable.

Tom, those photos are great. I see a quite an improvement in you and the bike, you both are looking great.

Don

Torrilin

Weirdly

In 2005 I moved to Los Angeles to be with my partner. One car for the two of us, so I started walking everywhere. After about 6 months or so, my partner started taking the bus to work instead of driving. By May 2007, he had a new job in Madison WI, and neither one of us had driven a car for any distance for over a year. We could easily walk 5 miles tho! We decided we'd pick up bikes when we moved, since there was no way we'd get a nice apartment within walking distance of his job *and* shopping.

Three years on, we're both on our second bikes... a Breezer Villager for me, a Bianchi San Jose for him. I've done my first 45 mile ride, and I'm working on building up the strength and speed to ride a century. He's not as good at distance, but he's a lot faster than me, and he's easing into winter commuting. In heavy snow, he works from home, and if the roads are icy, he takes the bus in. Or he'll get bored and walk.

Neither one of us is really any skinnier... but we're both a helluva lot stronger and more capable than we were 5 years ago.

Shepp30 

OP… I just started riding again after nearly a 10-year hiatus; it feels great, just like you are imagining it will feel…lol. Anyway, much like you I was 270 and headed in the wrong direction on January 1st of this year. I made up my mine to change my eating habits, and on January 5th I started exercising - treadmill, exercise bike, etc. I rode 10 miles a day 3 or 4 days per week on the exercise bike during January and February. On March 7th I started riding my freshly serviced 1996 Trek 850 “hybridized” MTB. That bike now has 780 miles on it for the year and my new to me 1995 Trek 730 hybrid, which I picked up off craigslist last week, has around 50 miles on it. I rode 42 miles with 3 friends last Saturday on a local bike path, what a great ride.

Why in the world did I wait so long to get back on the bike I’ll never know. One things for sure, this site will certainly keep you motivated whether you simply just read the posts and or participate in the forums. Oh I almost forgot … today when I took my 21 mile ride, I was carrying 55 pounds less of me then in January.

Daspydyr 

Same as you! Just got tired of what I saw in the mirror and what I couldn't do because I was just way out of shape. I started wtih 6 mile rides around the neighborhood. Started adding rides to the bank and the post office. 8 months later I spend 6 hours of exploring dirt roads and single track in desert chasing rabbitts and lizards. Don't give up, push yourself, you WILL make continual progress. Add some weights and belly work on a pilates ball. It feels so much better.

c_m_shooter

Get riding outside as soon as possible, spinning in the gym is a boring death march. There is a whole world outside waiting to be explored. If you start now you will be used to the heat before it gets too bad. (I am serious) Riding at night can be pretty exciting too and gives you a little relief from the summer heat.

mtalinm

I couldn't take the pain in my ankles and knees from the treadmill. discovering I had patellar tendonitis didn't help. someone said bicycling was lower impact, so I picked up the very cheapest model I could find and started biking 2 miles to the train station. pretty easy except that it's straight uphill on the way home.

the first time almost killed me ... my heart was pounding and I flopped on the couch for the evening. yes, after 2 miles!

after a couple of months I built up my strength and started riding the whole way to work (12-15 miles). At this point I have logged almost 1000 miles and just bought a road bike for longer distances. the best part is that my knee is MUCH better than when I started!

dlester

I got started on a stationary bike that I parked in front of the TV. I would pedal it while watching the Colbert Report. At first I wouldn't make it to the first commercial break, but eventually I was pedalling through the entire episode. Then I did a little math and realized in the time it took the Colbert Report to play, I pedalled far enough to get to work. That Saturday I did a 'dry run' in riding to/from work and I have been bicycle commuting ever since. That was almost three years ago now.

exile

My grandmother bought me a bike after high school. I used to pedal to work during the summer months, but when I got a car, the bike quickly returned to the basement. I would occasionaly bring it out for the summer to commute ( I did this for 2-3 years). When I moved away for college I always drove (full time course load plus a part time job and some volunteer work at the school).

After graduation and I got a job only 3 miles or so from where I lived I started commuting occasionally and only during the summer months. When I brought the bike into the shop to be serviced the guy noted how heavy, old, and pretty worn it was (I didn't take care of it much except for oiling the chain occasionally). At first the sticker shock got to me, but I did want a new bike. I started visiting bike shops in the area and found a nice used one.

Over the summer I would commute, but if the forecast even had a slight chance of rain I would return back to driving that day. After about a year or so of this I figured what is the worst that can happen if I get wet. Plus weathermen always seemed to be wrong about the rain anyways regardless of what percentage chance they said there was. So within the last year or two I have been a year round commuter and now have two bikes (Jamis exile (used) and Surly LHT). I'd say in that time frame i've had to drive to work maybe a total of 20 days out of two years.

So just start riding, what's the worst that can happen? If you have questions, concerns, or stories you want to share someones always online somewhere. Good luck and welcome.

ZippyThePinhead

This is good advice, and I started on a $20 bike, but it's not easy to find good $15 or $20 bikes, and instead of spending weeks or months searching for one, I'd say just get a new bike from a local bike store or, if you know people who can help (help you get the right size, know enough to recognize a good buy on a used bike, and maybe ride with you), get a used bike off Craigslist or some equivalent.

Neil_B

I never rode a bike as a child, and I'd always wanted to. So after I lost 125 pounds I bought a bike and taught myself to ride. I've not looked back.

StephenH

We moved up to Colorado quite a while back. I got started hiking, lost a fair bit of weight, then we moved back to Texas, and I slowly regained it.

Three or four years ago, I was at a funeral for one of my elderly uncles. My cousin walked up to me, poked me in the tummy, and said "Looks like you're putting on some weight there." I thought "Hmmph!" But he went on, "You should do what I did. I started riding a bicycle and lost about 60 lbs."

So I went home, went out to the Academy store, and bought a $100 mountain bike and started riding. And promptly bought a new seat for it so I could stand it. I started off on the local bike trail, and could ride 5-10 miles a day depending on how I looped around on it. I went through two wheels on that bike, had a two or three month lull in there somewhere when it wasn't rideable. I never could get the gears adjusted where it would go into every gear and the brakes gradually got worse and worse. I did take it on one small-scale charity ride and did the 15 mile route, and rode down to and around White Rock Lake a couple of times, which was a 22 mile ride.

I got fed up with fiddling with the adjustments on the bike, so I looked around and eventually ordered a Worksman single-speed cruiser. I'd had the old bike about a year. Right before the Worksman bike came in, the old bike was stolen, and I pity the thief. But I got to riding the Worksman bike pretty regularly, normally doing around 10 miles a day on the local bike trail. The neat thing with it was that I could ride EVERY day, instead of working on it every other day. Then I noticed the local bike shop had a ride on Saturday mornings, so I started riding on it. And I rode it on a bunch of other charity rides. I rode a 100k ride, and that worked, so I did the Hotter-n-Hell 100 on that bike, and again the next year. It wasn't fast, but it worked. I got to reading up on and discussing randonneuring on another site, and deduced I should be able to ride a brevet on that bike. So I did a 100k permanent, did a 160k permanent, and then did a 200k brevet on the Worksman. All was good.

So, encouraged by the results, I set off to do another 200k permanent. I got too hot, too tired, too slow, and then had a flat before I got to the 100k control, and ran out of time. Tried again a bit later, got to the 86 mile mark or so, and started having leg cramp problems that just brought me to a standstill. "Get a better bike!" they all said. So last fall, I shopped around a bit and got my Raleigh Sojourn, and have been riding it since. I did my next 200k last December, and have been doing one a month since then.

And somehow it seems in among all that riding, I'm actually gaining some speed. Maybe it's riding into the wind that helps. Anyway, I've done a couple of 200k's where I finished in okay time, but was also the last person, or next-to-last person in. But I did one back at the first of May where I was actually in amongst the crowd instead of being the red-lantern guy, and that was cool, because I could talk to other people as I rode and stuff. And I went on a charity ride last Saturday and actually avereged 19.1 mph, which was 2 mph faster than I'd ever done a ride like that before. So now I'm all excited about riding again. I've been trying to ride 500 miles a month, and have made it every month this year.

I don't normally weigh myself, but the heaviest I've ever been at the doctor's was 286 lbs, I think. I'm 6'-1-1/2" or so, so I'm not exactly a butterball, but definitely had some weight to lose, too. I think right now, I'm at about 235. I figured out that I had pretty much lost all I was going to lose by just riding, so I've been trying to watch what I eat a lot more closely, and bought a scale a couple of weeks ago. I'm not sure I'd have any fat left if I got down to 200, but I know I still have some spare-tire fat, so that's what I'm working on.

MIH-Dave

Scary my birthday is 9/25 too, but I've got a couple of years on you. Keep up the good work, but be forewarned it is addictive!

indyfabz

Several bikes from Sears starting with a trike and ending with a 10-speed Free Spirit. Dropped out of cycling in high school and through most of college. I worked as a store room clerk in my college caffeteria. That required me to, among other things, walk up and down stairs carrying heavy loads. My feet started to hurt. I thought I had stress fractures or something. Went to my mom's GP. He examined me, and then something alog the lines of the the following exchange took place:

Dr: You know why your feet hurt?
Me: No. Why?
Dr.: Because you are fat. What are those? (points to my stretch marks).
Me: Stretch marks.
Dr: Lose weight.

I was 6'2", 265 lbs. I bought a Centurion DX 500 and started commuting to and around school. Got hit by a car (his fault, hit and run), bought a better bike and started riding more. Whenever I could. To class. Between classes. At night after studying. Crashed that bike (lone bike trail accident. Go figure.) and bought an even better one. Lost 90 lbs. in 9 months. Haven't stopped since. I ride for sport. I ride for transportation. I ride for travel. All of it for fun. I am confident that I have ridden a bike more miles than I have driven a car.

cyclokitty 

I had a bike as a kid but really only rode it for a couple of years or so when I was 11 and 12 years old. I received it when I was 9 but it was far too big for me and I couldn't balance myself on it. It took a couple of years for me to grow into it and then I hit my one and only growth spurt so when I turned 13 I was too tall for it. Dratz. My mom couldn't afford to buy me a new bike and she worried herself silly whenever I went out the door with it in the first place.

I did borrow a bike on a couple of occasions when I was 20 years old but that was it until I was 34 years old. A couple of years before my 34th birthday we had that massive east coast black out and I was completely stuck. No subway. Crowded buses. And my walking skills were poor at best since I tipped the scales at 320 lbs and I'm only 5'2 (on a tall day) so I was dragging some serious weight on a short structure. It very nearly killed me walking the 8.5 km to work and then the 8.5 km back home for a few days. Then I realized how lucky I was that my walk was only 17 km round trip and that I could walk them safely in my city. That things would be different if I lived further away or lived in a dangerous town or if the city was in some kind of serious trauma rather than an electrical annoyance (the lights came on pretty quickly in my part of the city, luckily for me). I started walking more than usual by getting off the subway a stop before my typical stop. Walking to a further bus stop. Walking on my lunch hour. Eating less junk food and replacing the junk with veggies. There was lots of back sliding but it worked and a couple of years later I was 290 lbs and I felt ready for a bike.

My goal was to ride my bike to work, to errands, and for the sheer joy of riding in the fresh air. I visited lots of different bike shops and learned the differences between road bikes, tri-bikes, the different kinds of mountain bikes, recumbent bikes, trikes, touring bikes, and electric bikes. I finally found a store that didn't look at me like I was a monstrous ogre who was going to leave chocolate finger prints on their precious stock and didn't try to sell me a full carbon race bike that would look at home in the Tour de France but kill me from the twitchiness getting to the corner store. I tried several bikes and decided that an affordable KHS Town and Country comfort city bike was my ride with an upgraded rear wheel. I love that bike.

At first I walked the bike to the park and rode up and down the path. That got old fast. I walked to the cemetery 1.5 km away because I wasn't comfortable riding on the city streets. I'd ride the protected roads in the cemetery, practicing turning corners, stops and starts, working out which gears are best for flats and hills, pretending I was approaching a stop light so I would brake properly, and then after a couple of weeks I was skilled enough to get on the quiet side streets. That was a heck of an accomplishment for me. I was thoroughly proud of myself and my partner and friends were thrilled too. I only rode on nice days and it was a year before I tried commuting to work. Some days I rode to work on my bike and brought the bike with me on the subway. I generally commuted on my bike a couple of days a week when I was working daylight shifts rather than try riding at night. It was another year before I tried riding at night, in the rain, and a nerve wracking post early winter storm snowy ride home in the dark with drizzle. Eek. But I did it.

Now I ride everywhere and I stopped buying monthly transit passes a couple of years ago. I ride to the grocery store, to go out for supper, to the beach, to explore different parts of the city, and to amuse myself. I don't ride in snow and ice but rain is no problem with a rain jacket, and the cold is not as cold while riding. I haven't lost much more weight because I'm really good at back sliding. But I've managed to keep my weight from heading past 280 and my speed is 20% faster this year than the past couple of years.

My achilles tendon pain, which used to drive me up the walls, is now less present. Instead I stretch my calves before and after walks and rides to prevent my calves from tightening up. As well, I find replacing the insoles in my shoes every few months helps a lot.

I'd give bike riding a try. The most frustrating thing I found with walking was it took so darn long to get any place. With a bike you are guaranteed getting from point A to point B at twice the walking speed, and that speed will only get better as you ride more.