Doohickie

That's what I did. I started riding after not doing so for almost 20 years. My office site moved closer to my home (7 miles) and I just started riding it.

I did my best to ride neighborhood streets and stay away from main roads. Eventually I got more daring, and now I ride out on the main roads when they are the best route. You just have to get out there.

I think the biggest thing is to get a helmet (if you haven't ridden in a long time, your highest risk of falling off the bike is highest at the beginning), and to make yourself as visible as possible, using lighting and high visibility clothing. The Planet Bike Superflash is the best rear blinkie light for the money. You can get a construction worker's vest at Home Depot for about $10.

But mainly.... just ride!

no motor?

This is the way a lot of us got started, one step at a time. Plan ahead, pack the night before (some of us till need help on that part), have a backup plan and have fun. You'll be back wondering about which widget to buy to make things better sooner than you think, enjoy the learning process.

ChipSeal

First of all, best wishes and welcome!

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time! Take it slow, build up your endurance. Don't feel like you have to commute the entire distance. Put your bike on a rack on the car and park it two miles from work. This can actually be a bit of fun- Park where your return after work is mostly downhill, or with a tailwind!

After a while extend the distance. Other ideas are to take the bike all the way to work and ride it home that night, and riding back to work the next day. There is no rule that you have to do the whole distance every day!

Keep at it, it will get easier. And less painful.

Get what ever bike you use fitted, it will make any ride more comfortable. (Fitted = a LBS will adjust the seat and stuff to maximize your efficiency.)

For good advice on playing in traffic see here.

nkfrench 

Despite being in decent cardiovascular shape from swimming, I had no leg conditioning at all and a bad knee. Also no acclimitization to TX summer heat. I built up my "bike" conditioning first with short neighborhood rides, then some flat weekend rides on bike trails, and then gradually getting accustomed to riding in more traffic. I arranged for keycard access for the showers at work and inspected the shower facilities. When I could manage the total daily distance on one trip, I tried a "dry run" to work on a Sunday including carrying a normal commute load in a duffel bungee-corded onto the bike. I rode to the office, sat in the airconditioning pounding fluids; then rode back to the starting point. It was a serious challenge and I struggled mightily with the hills. It was a partway commute (drive+park), 9 miles each way. During this build-up I was able to get some clothing/bike issues sorted out and educate myself.

When I started a "live" commute, I figured out more things. How safety glasses were needed due to bugs along the river during twilight. Little route tweaks to improve speed and safety. How many water bottles were needed. Timelines. Settling into routines to make everything easier.

The first commutes I would have to stop dismount and rest every 3 miles or so. The hills were killing me. They were like milestones ... just make it up this hill and you can rest. Get to this church parking lot and you can sit down for 5 minutes and cool off. Get up this hill and there will be a sweet downhill as a "reward". Sprint across this busy street and make it to this stretch and you'll enjoy the aroma of the wildflowers or mown grass and be able to cruise and enjoy. Get past this cobbled surface and you'll have buttery smooth pavement that even uphills will seem easy on. After this next hill there will be walkers and joggers to say "howdy" to. It was all struggle and then enjoy a simple reward.

I've relocated and work in an office a few miles away. While I still just bike to work 2-3 times a week, they are now full commutes from my house, 30 miles r/t. I still check off the little challenges and look forward to the little rewards.

In my case, I was unwilling to get in over my head and have to call a friend or co-worker to bail me out for a lack of preparation. So it was important for me to rehearse and work up to it. The first time I attempted a full commute (on a Sunday) it was a dismal failure resulting in heat stress and putting me in bed the rest of the day once I barely managed to get home just from the halfway point on a poorly-chosen, more difficult route. That led to my decision to start with partial commutes and I found a new route after talking to some other bike commuters.

Some say "just do it", I say "just get on the bike" and prepare yourself for some rides that challenge you but don't overwhelm you. YMMV.

irclean

Great story, nkfrench. Tell me, what does YMMV mean? I've seen it a number of times now and it remains the only acronym I have yet to define.

no motor?

Your Mileage May Vary - what worked for me might not work for you.

irclean

Oh, Mileage. Now it makes sense. As opposed to YOMV. Clever.

missile meister

As you can see, there are as many different ideas as there are commuters. Ultimately, it all depends on you. The fact that you point out that you've been sedentary shows you are a bit concerned with the effort involved. Just listen to your body and do as much as you're ready for.

I think Freddie Mercury said it best: "Get on your bikes and ride!"

crazybikerchick

-Leave enough time on the commute so you can get off the bike and stretch or sit on a bench and take a break or have a snack.
-Remember it will get easier!
-Start off in nice weather (no sense throwing more challenges into the mix).
-Remember its always okay to get off your bike and walk with it, so if there's a hill too steep, or a turn that's too challenging to merge with traffic you can become a pedestrian.
-If you have public transit where you are that allows bikes you could ride one direction and take transit and your bike home, or you could ride partway to work as you work up to the distance

lhbernhardt

Cycling is one of those wonderful sports where, up to a point, there is a direct correlation between the amount of work you put in and the amount of fitness you obtain. (Diminishing returns start at the point you are fit enough to train for competition, so you likekly have a ways to go yet.) So, the more you ride, the fitter you will get, and it will become noticeable. You don't need to go fast, and you don't need to use big gears. Most beginners try to ride in the biggest gear the bike has, a big mistake. Don't do this; it is way more efficient to put the chain on the smaller chainring in front (if there are two) or the middle chainring (if there are three) and on one of the middle cogs in back. This should make pedaling feel easier. Don't spin the legs too fast or too slow, always take the middle path, according to what's comfortable.

Be careful with cycling. Some people get really hooked on it. It can become quite an addiction for some people.

Luis

Ka_Jun

It will hurt, then it will hurt less, then even less. Then you'll reach a point where you feel weird if you didn't ride in. It's worth it, your body will thank you.

Rhodabike

I'll add one thing to all the excellent advice here: learn to use your gears. Go to a deserted parking lot on a Sunday morning and practice, practice, practice shifting up and down from low to high.
Nothing makes me cringe quite like seeing some poor newbie grinding away at far too big a gear, shoulders heaving from side to side with the effort, kneecaps no doubt being ground to dust. Sometimes, if I suggest to such a person that it would be easier in a lower gear, they'll admit they don't know how use them. Perhaps all those cogs and chainrings intimidate them, but it isn't rocket science, it's just cables and pulleys, and you won't break anything unless your bike is in really decrepit shape.
If your route is very hilly, a compact or triple crankset can make the trip more enjoyable. Or, ask your lbs about lowering your gears (if needed) by installing a wider range freewheel and possibly a long-cage derailleur as well.

aley

Not my experience at all. I lost weight without consciously restricting food intake because, like most Americans, I tend to eat more at a sitting than I should; as such, when adding in an extra thousand kcal burned during my commute, I tend not to eat more than I did before I was cycling regularly. This has disturbed the equilibrium between my caloric intake and my weight, and in response my weight has dropped, and continues to drop, yet I don't feel any hungrier than I did before I started commuting.

As your fitness level increases, it's typical to feel more energetic as well. You'll feel tired after a workout (or a commute, if you're commuting in such a way that it's a workout), but you'll recover more quickly as your fitness improves, and after your recovery you'll feel more energetic since you're more fit and therefore more able to undertake physical activities than you were before.

I jumped straight into a commute of seven miles each way from a rather sedentary lifestyle - I rode it once on a weekend to make sure I could actually make it the distance, then rode it on the following Monday. Within two weeks I was riding it five days a week. It was tough, and I was sore, particularly toward the end of the first couple of weeks. But it got easier very quickly - the second month I was commuting was the first month I went without driving to work at all, and I pushed hard to hit that milestone because it was fun. If you leave yourself plenty of time to make it so you don't have to hurry, and you give yourself permission to go slow (or even get off the bike, as another poster had suggested), you'll likely do just fine jumping straight into it.

Commuter_Dan

A couple more points;

- Plan your route. Very often the best route is not the most direct, or the one you'd drive in a car. I commuted from Hamden to New Haven for many years and found that instead of fighting traffic down Whitney Ave every day it was easier and more pleasant to move over a block and ride parallel to Whitney on the wide, low-traffic residential streets.

- At this time of year bike commuters need to have very good lights. Minimally, a high-quality red blinkie (like a planet bike superflash) in the back, and the brightest white light you can afford in the front. There are many threads on this forum about lights for your bike. If you're going to ride during dusk/dark it's really important.

Lots of great advice from other posters. The main thing is to just get started, enjoy the ride and keep at it.

Good luck!

QuickityJacks

While there are cycling specific sites out there, my favorite is https://www.gmap-pedometer.com/ . It's a good way to plot routes, track mileage, and even look at elevation changes. It's very bare bones, but pretty helpful. Ignore the caloric tracking, though, it's ridiculously off.

snorkel

So I just started commuting to work by bicycle this very week. I'm not in fantastic shape.. Not overweight, but am currently lacking in muscles. Desk job and all that. There are two very, very large hills that separate me from work, and the intimidation factor of these two hills has kept me in my car. Well, we've been having some very nice weather here in Ohio this week, so Monday morning I said screw it and gave it a shot.

The long and short of it: the two big intimidating hills suck, but they are do-able. I huff, I puff, I sweat, I shift to my lowest gear and spin spin spin while moving at a snail's pace, but I make it to the the top and I feel pretty darned good about it. I woke up this morning and my legs felt tired. It would have been easy to talk myself out of riding, but I didn't. The hills were a bit tougher today, but I made it to the top. I am certain that if I keep going it will get easier.

So yeah. Riding a bike isn't complicated, and unless you're riding a lot of miles to get to work then there really isn't much of a reason to not just hop on your bike and give it a shot. At the worst you end up walking part of the way, but there is absolutely no harm or disgrace in that.

The only things I've done prior to my first commute was I took my bike to the LBS for a proper fitting, and I got some lights as it is dark when I leave in the morning.

pharasz

I started a fitness program at age 22 when, three months into my first job after graduating college, when I realized I was becoming sedentary. I started with a 1 hour exercise class three times a week. About 3 years later I added in a 45 minute weight training session three times a week on my lunch hour. A couple of years after that I replaced the exercise class with running because I didn't have time for it since I was going to night school for my master's and had a wife and two kids.

Five years later I added swimming. A couple of years after that I began biking on weekends and doing a spin class before work twice a week. Then, for a few years, I did a few triathlons. Then I had knee surgery (to repair the effects of 25 years of running), hung up my running shoes for good, and began biking to work. Now I realize that driving a car to a spin class is the definition of insanity.

The point is, over a period of 29 years, I slowly evolved a 3 hour per week exercise program into a 9 hour per week lifestyle, which includes swimming, weight lifting, biking to work, and biking for joy on the weekend.

I have never been sedentary, and never NOT been fit, so I don't have any concept of what that even feels like. All I can do is explain how I got where I am. When a sedentary person my age says "Oh, I want to be fit like you, I'm going to start exercising" (and I hear that often), my response is "Ooh... that's tough". And then they want to know what I mean by that. Here is what I say:

Starting an exercise program after years of a sedentary lifestyle is like giving up smoking after years of being a two pack a day smoker. It is not impossible - people do it all the time (see the example from dwr1961 above), but more people fail than succeed.

My "addiction" to exercise started much like a smoker's addiction to cigarettes. It started small, and grew over the years. The two pack-a-day smoker started with 2 or 3 cigarettes a day, and it grew from there. A few years go by and two packs is nothing to them, and quitting is nearly impossible. It's the same way with exercise.

chephy

Get the bike fitted properly and learn to use gears. This is important to any new cyclist, but in particular one who's not used to physical activity, because he is not as likely to know the difference between good pain and bad pain, and is more likely to give up because he thinks the pain comes from being unfit, even if in reality raising the saddle or shifting down would have eliminated the problem.

thdave

Get an internal gear hub bike, like an old three speed or a newer 7 or 8 speed, and there's nothing to learning the gears. Simple as pie.

chephy

Even in these cases though one should learn enough about gears to know a) that they even exist and b) what it is they do. The hardest part of learning about gears is not figuring out front vs. rear shifting. It's knowing when to shift and why (and that you can and should shift at all). And even when the mechanical principle of gearing is understood, many novice cyclists still choose a gear that's way too hard (and then decide that riding a bike is excessively tiring and is causing knee problems).

I am not saying that all of this is HARD to learn. It only takes five minutes to explain it, five minutes to ride around and get an idea of it, and a few hours of riding to make it automatic and start working out your gearing style. The hard part is knowing that this is something you should learn.

PaulH

Don't let the physical aspect of cycling intimidate you. Keep in mind that most of the world regards the bicycle not as a form of exercise, but as a way of avoiding exercise. There is a convenience versus speed continuum ranging from a Dutch banker in a three piece suit on one hand, to a roadbike commuter with pedal attachments and special clothing on the other. There is no "right" choice -- you have to decide where on the spectrum you want to be. You can make your trip to work as easy or as demanding as you want to. Don't push yourself initially -- if you want to go fast, work up to it.

Paul

Artkansas 

That's one of the coolest parts. Currently, I spend a couple of blocks on a nearly deserted section of MUP that allows me to circumvent about 2 miles of nasty traffic and replace it with a mile of suburban streets. One earlier ride had the middle 5 miles of a 7.5 mile commute going through the center of a nature preserve instead of battling traffic and doing an additional 4 miles.