Thursday fitness fun fact
This story reminded me of my first biking experience after WLS with my then 9 year-old daughter, Sarah. To re-live my personal experience, just replace the son's name with Sarah and the Spiderman bike with a Hello Kitty bike. Sarah and I are now training up for the Elephant Rock Cycling Classic (8000+ riders) which is the first 100 miler I did 10 months after WLS. It's a very meaningful ride for me and to get to share it with Sarah now will be so special. Anyway, this is a story of......
The Love of Biking
"We’ve been back for about two months now, and far from settling down, the number of things on my todo list seems to not only be increasing, but also accelerating. New job. Old job. New friends. Old friends. Rachel. The boys.
I’ve found it particularly hard to get much exercise lately. I know I should be getting up at 6am and running or biking, but I’ve never been much of a morning person. And with the 2 hour round-trip commute to San Mateo, I’m finding it hard to get any exercise at the back end of the day either. Of course having the boys yell “Daddy, Daddy, you’re home!” doesn’t make it any easier to turn right around and say “bye, see you in half an hour” right after I’ve walked through the door. So I’ve been looking for a way to kill two birds with one stone…get some exercise, and hang out with the kids at the same time.
So, here's what we did. Nathaniel rides his Spiderman bicycle next to me on the bike path that runs between our house and the dog park in Mill Valley. We’ve done this three times now, and each time he gets a little faster and a little less wiggly-all-over-the-road. So much so that I’m a little worried that it won’t be long before I’m unable to keep up with him. We had a great time chatting away last time…ok, he was doing most of the chatting away and I was doing a lot of grunting in reply. But we stopped at the dog park to have a rest. And then we played on a slide on the way home.
But what made it all worthwhile, all the lack of exercise, all the frustration of getting him to stay up with me, was when we got back. He looked up at me, helmet slightly askew, and said “Daddy, I really love biking with you.”
Thanks Nathaniel…I really love biking with you too."