I've been cycling seriously
Now for a month. Averaging around 40 miles per day. However I'm still smoking around a pack a day. Farthest I've gone is 65 miles averaging 15.8 mph. I feel like such an ass smoking during breaks. Anyone else want to admit to smoking and cycling?

I'm 24 and in great health for the most part but I can't help but wonder how much my addiction is stunting my progress. If anyone has quit while cyling, how much better did you feel after?

Don't smoke and never did. My grandmother was able to quit after smoking for 30 years. My mother in law quit after smoking for 40 years. My grandfather didn't quit until he was bed ridden and on oxygen. He's dead. Seeing the way my grandfather suffered and died was enough to keep me from ever trying cigarettes. Smoking a pack a day is holding you back and is slowly killing you.

My mother in law who quit last year after decades of smoking was barely able to walk across a room without being short of breath. Every cold she got would put her in the hospital. Fast forward a year. She walks on the treadmill for an hour a day 5 days a week. She can keep up with her grandkids and doesn't get out of breath during normal activities. She gets a cold and just feels miserable like the rest of us instead of nearly dying. The transformation from diseased to healthy is actually pretty quick. She was much improved after just 4 months. You are young, quit now before you really screw yourself up.

I owned a bike briefly about 6 years ago. At the time I had been smoking for about 26 years (started when I was 14 or 15), anywhere from 1 to 3 packs a day. I couldn't even make it one mile around our neighborhood, there are a few hills, but only one should give a newbie any real trouble. I have been smoke free now for 16 months and its like I never smoked. I've had a new bike now for about a month and am accelerating up most of those same hills that I couldn't get up at all 6 years ago, though my weak knees still have trouble with the one. I used to hate reformed smokers who looked down their noses at those of us who still smoked and I try really hard to not sound the way they did to me, but I will say this. STOP!! I don't care how you do it, just do it. You may not be suffering the effects of smoking yet, but one day you will, and by then it may be too late. I can't really take credit for stopping. I tried everything under the sun and couldn't, then I had sinus surgery and when I woke up after surgery I had no desire to smoke and haven't smoked since. Something in my brain got reset while I was under anesthesia, that's all I can say. I can count the number of times I've had a craving on both hands and even those cravings were gone almost before I even realized I was having them.

I smoke, 8 quit attempts and the longest I made it was 6 months. It's definitely holding me back. Good news is I've gone down from 4 to 5 packs a day to 1. That was really hard. The worst part of trying to quit is the first two weeks. I wake up with the shakes and throw up. My body is really physically addicted to nicotine. If I don't have it I get seriously ill. Wish I'd never lit the first one.

I'm 31, I've smoked since I was 14. I'll quit when my financial situation is secure enough that I don't have to worry about showing up at a job interview transformed into Gollum from withdrawal, or when money forces the issue, which may be sooner rather than later.

I don't feel like an ass smoking on breaks. If anything, I think it makes a more identifiable example for people who consider taking up riding, but are reluctant. It's a little more grounded in reality for people. I expect we've all known somebody that wanted to get more active and fit, but worried that they couldn't live like the health nuts and sports superstars you see as the usual faces for things. But me... if a 350 lb guy with a pack a day habit can get his tank of a bike, his fat ass and 50-100 lb of cargo up and moving, other imperfect people can, too.

I used to smoke, and I'm so glad that I quit. I was the guy that would get home from a nice ride and light one up. I felt dumb doing that, so I just decided one day that I wasn't going to do that anymore. I didn't do it cold turkey, but stopped before and after rides, and cut back at work, ect. Just start somewhere, and you'll be ok.

Until I quit ill just have to strive to be the best smoking cyclist I can be. Once I quit I'll be even better. It's like training with a 100lb monkey on my back, once it's lifted I'll be twice as good.

Ill always still feel awkward smoking on the
MUP bench but that's just smoking shame that society puts on smokers. Pretty soon smoking will be illegal anyway.

I don't know how people can smoke. I'm not being critical of the actual act either(that's a whole 'nother discussion). Just the price alone makes me never want to smoke. You could almost get a new tire every week for the amount you are spending. That's a lot of miles !

My cigarettes are ~$14 a carton which isn't too bad.

First I know how difficult it is to stop. But it's worth it. You start feeling better in three days or so - not in terms of cycling performance but more like you're free of a shackle. It takes. Few months before you realize an improvement on the bike. Then you feel better all around because you don't have the burden - financial, nasty habit, the smell of smoke, the shakes lighting up after a long time, the need to get out of a building to light up, etc.

When you do stop, reward yourself with a new bike.

Some of us started when tobacco taxes were low and the dollar still had spending power. By the time things became terribly expensive, we were already adapted to believe nicotine is a requirement for physical and mental health, with dire physiological and psychological consequences of quitting attempts simply reinforcing the idea. One can know, rationally, that something is false and still be defeated by their body's reaction to iit. Witness anyone with motion sickness stumbling and spewing despite no actual illness.

I feel really bad when I pass a guy on my way to the store, stop at the store get a pack and my crappucino doubleshot enjoy them while watching him pass.. then hop back on and pass him back on my way. I smoke a pack a day, repeat offender of relapse quitting.

Sorry, but I *gotta* do this. I am a Respiratory Therapist, so you know what I'm gonna say.

Don't smoke.

See? just what you thought I was gonna say. I canNOT overstate, though, the seriousness of it all.

Of course there is no one who doesn't know that smoking is harmful. Furthermore I wouldn't minimize the power of addiction, or the difficulty of breaking habits. I "get" how tough it is to quit, truly I do. I was a smoker until my 2nd year of Respiratory school. At the same time I was seeing cancerous lungs, beginning to treat dying patients every day, etc - they discovered a cancer under my tongue. For me this was the moment of conviction. That moment will vary by individual, of course. Every ex-smoker has their own story. I still know Respiratory Therapists and Nurses who smoke to this day. Makes me sad. Makes me worry about them.

Anyway, I won't just re-hash all the stuff we've all heard a gazillion times. There is one aspect, though, that I seldom hear mentioned so it might be my unique bit to offer - a new angle, however small.

How many times have we all heard someone say "Hell, I could walk out tomorrow and get hit by a truck!" as a rationale for continuing harmful habits? That is hard to argue with, isn't it? Yup, we're all going to die. The thing is that lung diseases are an especially awful way to go. Slow, painful, horribly agonizing, and eternally drawn out not only for the patient but also for everyone who loves them. I literally do not know words to adequately describe it.

If you decide to end your life by jumping off a tall building you may have a few seconds to feel the terror - a few seconds of complete, panic-filled regret. A few seconds to know that it is irrevocably too late to change anything. With lung disease one doesn't live with terror and regret for a few seconds - they live with it every waking moment for months.

Maybe years.

I see patients literally using every ounce of energy they can muster to draw each breath. Each breath ... this breath ..... this breath .... the next breath ... requiring the same amount of effort you might use to sprint or dead lift a heavy barbell. Every breath. Every breath for months. After you sprint, you can coast. After you dead lift, you can put the bar down. The emphysema patient can't coast down the hill, he needs another breath. I see patients who can't lay down because they can only breathe while sitting up, gasping and moaning "help me ... help me ... help me" .

Part of me is sometimes tempted to look at that person and say "Remember when people were telling you not to smoke back in 1970? 1980? 1990? THEY were helping you. You rejected the help. Now nothing *can* help you." - but of course I do not say those things.

Here is another we've all heard: "Not every smoker gets that stuff! Someone's Uncle Whoever smoked all his life and could run 10 miles and died of a gunshot wound from a jealous husband when he was 85", yadda yadda. It is also true that some people have been known to cross a busy interstate highway on foot and survive. Am *I* going to try that? no. I'm not liking the odds.

You certainly could get hit by a truck tomorrow - agreed. Lung disease? You'd rather get hit by the truck. You'd rather be dragged behind the truck. Your family would likely be less traumatized if they saw you be dragged behind the truck than to be around for month after interminable month of end-stage emphysema or lung cancer.

Apologies if I got too preachy, or too graphic, or was out of line there. I will also admit my post was only marginally relevant to the OP. Please forgive me, that stuff had been welling up for a little while and tonight it bubbled over.

Additionally: "nobody" quits on the first try. You didn't give up on bicycle challenges when they weren't easy so don't give up on improving your health by eliminating tobacco. Tried to quit once? twice? three hundred and fifteen times? Try again.

I quit worrying about cancer when I read about a study having linked certain bedroom behaviour to significantly increased risk of a kind of cancer. Thought about it and realized there is literally nothing I enjoy that hasn't been blamed for cancer one way or another. Even going out riding exposes you to a lot of sunlight, laying out the welcome mat for skin cancer. A life trying to avoid cancer just wouldn't be worth considering, let alone living.

Emphysema is rougher, I watched a great grandmother go out that way and it sucked. It's still only a physical thing, though, not a huge deal. Mental deterioration is where the true horror is at. There's nothing quite like seeing a smart, formidable man reduced to a weeping child, wanting only a glass of chocolate milk and unable to understand why he can't have one. That was another relative, and it was the most heartbreaking and pathetic thing I've ever witnessed. I'd rather be dead of emphysema at 50 than develop Alzheimer's or something similar around 60, and then hang on till 70.

Probably best to just die in a spectacular bike wreck if possible.

I would seriously cut down on the amount but looks to me like cycling and smoking go togather


I used to know a guy who mounted a car cigerette lighter on his bike and used a bottle type generator to power it.

I witnessed firsthand how a person who was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer leaves Earth. Sure, you're gonna die anyway, but you don't want to go that way. Trust me.

I'm much more afraid of how I might die than dying itself. I watched my dad slowly suffocate over a period of about 7 years after he was diagnosed with COPD and Emphysema. He continued to smoke and would even play with the O2 hose by holding it up to a lit cigarette and watching the cig burst into flames. If you've never seen anyone in ICU on a respirator having their lungs irrigated to flush out all the built up crud they no longer have the lung capacity to cough up by themsleves, you're lucky. Its not a pretty sight. Even seeing this first hand I could not quit. I'd resigned myself to dying the same way and was pretty depressed all the time. It effected my marriage, my work, nothing seemed worth the effort because I was sure I'd die horribly like my father and was down on myself because I knew how to prevent it and still couldn't do it. The only thing I discovered about nicotene replacement gimmicks was they go really well with a cigarette. Chantix side effects were really bad and as soon as I went off it I was right back to smoking. Hypnosis was a useless waste of money. Having the smoking switch flipped off in my brain while I was under anesthesia saved my life. I can't explain it and don't really care who, how or why. I'm just glad it happened.

One of the worst decisions I have ever made. I quit 14 years ago.
I am completely baffled as to why anyone smokes nowadays with what we know about it. Disgusting habit.

Some scary stuff in this thread. A hearty "attaboy" to all those who have quit and a "don't give up" to all those still working on it. I've never smoked, never even tried one, so I can't know how hard it is. My mom smoked from her early teens and tried to quit a few times over the years. She always knew myself, dad and my brothers hated it. She finally quite for good in her mid 50's. I'll need to ask her what finally did the trick.

I quit smoking last year ( it's been a year last week) I've been smoking for 21 years, started at 15 years old. It's the worst and most difficult thing I've ever did in my life. I tried a lot of time but finaly managed to stop when I started exercising at the same time. Seeing a difference gave me more will power. Good luck to anyone who's trying.

my last cigarette was 1/3/2012... I gave up my car and started commuting by bike full time on 1/30/2012... before that I would ride when I had "time" .. and before I moved to California, I would ride when weather permitted... I used cycling to deal with the withdrawal... it worked... every time I wanted a cigarette I would take a ride that would last as long as a cigarette if not longer.. the breaking point for me to quit was trying to hike the Desolation Wilderness and having trouble breathing at high elevations ... it was time to stop letting smoking prevent me from enjoying the finer things in life, like living by bike... or all the other activities I have been doing since... best thing I have ever done is stop.. and I have had zero desire to have one since that last one...

Lucky you!

And of course:

Wow this thread is blowing up. Seems that everyone's life has been touched by this addiction in one way or another.