Commuting by bike when you're out of shape

I've been fit for 30 years. That's made it pretty easy to have the opinion that riding your bike to work is easy. You just do it. 

The last few years though, illness that affects my physical capacity has at times reduced how frequently I could ride to work down to twice per week, otherwise I'd get really bagged out from commuting. 

Being less able to handle exercise made choosing to ride to work feel somewhat of a burden, "this is going to make me tired".  

Recently I was between cars so had to rely 100% on the bike for getting to and from work. Luckily it's only a 15-30 minute jaunt depending on if I take the straight shot or get away from traffic and take some trails. 

The first part of this year I was more affected by illness while the past two months blood tests show a mild swing into remission again. 

Feeling less sick is great, especially since it allows me to gain some fitness back. 

I was worried about how tired I was going to get. I had to plan to be less active after work and weekends. 

The first weekend after all week on the bike wasn't that bad. The third week I was pretty cooked, but every week after that was an improvement. 

I used to enjoy riding most days and it was great to be able to feel that again. 

Nothing beats the invigorating ride in and how pumped you feel when you arrive. Even with its sumptuous aroma and buzzy-buzz, coffee can't compete with how uplifted you feel after an active commute to work. 

Still, I was so glad to finally get my new (used) car after 5 weeks of commuting. I was having a few days where the legs felt like wet newspaper and needed a break. 

Enjoying daily riding can get the better of you, healthy and fit, or not. 

It was great to have my fossil fuel burner again. Gave my legs a rest, which made me faster. 

I'm doing some maintenance on the new wheels so I'm without my gas swilling behemoth again. But it's Monday!

Monday I drive to work with my weeks worth of clothing and lunch. I don't want to commute with a full backpack of clothes. What a PITA.  Or maybe, what a whiner. 

With overstuffed backpack in tow I hit the road for what turned out to be my strongest ride of the year, all 15 minutes of it. 

It felt so good to feel strong. The backpack? I got over it. I thought about the times I used to ride everywhere with a backpack. Grocery shopping was done by bike. 

Sure, nowadays there's picking up 10kg of kitty litter, $120.00 worth of groceries, 50kg bags of sand for yard projects etc.. Could use a bike trailer and plan smaller trips, but let's face it, the car is more practical and convenient for the large hauls with multiple stops. Those habits influence your thinking to be car-centric though, and had led me to move away from being bike-centric.. And getting sick only strengthened my less-bike-is-better new outlook. 

There's a balance in there somewhere, and that balance will have a tendency to shift depending on your situation. 

Recently I went through fearing riding my bike to work because it would be physically difficult and make me tired. I've never experienced that in the past. 

I got over that, and my rides got better. 

I'm not going to fool myself. I could very well become more ill again and have to ride less. But.. I'm going to take advantage, whenever I'm able, of how good it feels to ride to work, to gain fitness, and to realize that while cars have real-world use for sure, our dependence on them can cloud our judgment of what our options are, and of how enjoyable it is to have an active commute. 

Leave the car at home, often. Use it when you need it or your body needs a rest. Get out there and ride, walk, jog. 

And don't get disgruntled about backpacks and changing cloths. The real minus is living in a body that's less capable because it's not being exercised. 

Too Tired To Be Healthy

While a complete understanding of how sleep affects our health is lacking, we know enough to dismiss the myth that sleep is an inconvenience that interferes with life productivity.

How many times have you heard the axiom, "I'll sleep when I'm dead"?  Usually this boisterously pronounced phrase is used to convey that we're so important, and so bent on being productive 24/7 that we treat sleep like cheap date by only giving it the minimal attention needed to fulfill a rudimentary need.

Research tells us that if we don't enough sleep we'll die earlier, be sick more often, reduce cognitive function, reduce coordination, reduce athletic performance, and gain fat.

Sleeping in isn't the greatest thing either.  Getting too much sleep on a regular basis causes many of the problems getting too little sleep is known for.

A study from Finland (1) concluded that all-cause mortality (dyeing from any cause) increased for men and woman who slept less than 5 hours or greater than 10 hours, and that risk of cardiovascular disease was greater for men, but not for woman.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US estimates that 50-70 million US adults have chronic sleep and wakefulness disorders, and that sleep difficulties are associated with chronic diseases, limitations of daily functioning, and mortality.  The report (2) cited 38% of those reporting less than 7 hours sleep (37% of adults) fell asleep unintentionally at least once in the past 30 days.

So around a third of people don't get enough sleep and one third of those fall asleep unintentionally at least once per month. Doesn't sound like too many people are nodding off uncontrollably, but I suppose if you fall asleep at the wheel or during operating on a brain it might not be a good thing.

Recently the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a German study (3) that found one night of sleep depravation reduces energy expenditure in men by up to 20%. It wasn't that the study subjects moved around less, rather metabolism was slowed as an acute response to sleep depravation.

An earlier modest study (4) found that men who experienced one night of sleep deprivation consumed an extra 550 calories the next day, presumably due to alterations in hormones regulate hunger and satiety.

There's a certain amount of alarmism that accompanies reports of dying or developing disease from sleeping too much or too little, but in contrast I believe that most of us are too dismissive when it comes to making healthy sleep a priority.

It isn't all about death and dying though, cognitive function and daily productivity is reduced from not getting enough shut-eye.  The odd all-nighter might be needed to get the job done but overall regular healthy sleep will make our awake hours far more productive so we're more likely to get more done in less time, making the last minute all-nighter crunch unnecessary. When tired it takes longer resolve cognitive challenges and the error rate increases. Working too late will decrease total productivity due to poor decisions and creating more work to correct errors.

If you're falling behind on a project you're more likely to become more productive by getting consistent quality sleep rather than extending work hours so long that sleep is sacrificed.

Take home? Work longer if you need to, but not at the expense of quality sleep, or exercise for that matter.  A good nights sleep and 45 minutes of exercise is like pressing the turbo-boost on your brain.

A Korean survey (5) on sleep deprivation effects on cognitive function of residents and interns concluded that 41% of those studied were sleep deprived, sleeping around 5 hours each night.  These medical professionals were more stressed and experienced attention deficits as well as difficulty in learning.

So really the best way to get more done in a day is to get a good nights sleep as often as possible, making an effort to maintain our sleep cycle on weekends as well.

To get a good nights sleep:

Go to bed and wake at the same time every night as much as possible
Avoid eating a heavy meal 2-4 hours prior to going to bed
Make the room you sleep in dark, cool, and quite
Avoid using an alarm to wake you, and never use the snooze button
Use your bedroom for sleeping, not working or TV watching
Exercise regularly


(1) Self-reported sleep duration, all-cause mortality,... [Sleep Med. 2011] - PubMed result

(2) Unhealthy sleep-related behaviors--12 States, 2009. [MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2011] - PubMed result

(3) Acute sleep deprivation reduces energy expenditure... [Am J Clin Nutr. 2011] - PubMed result

(4) Acute partial sleep deprivation increases food intake in healthy men

(5) A survey of sleep deprivation patterns and their e... [Sleep Med. 2011] - PubMed result

Supporting literature

Sleep and Obesity in Children and Adolescents. [Pediatr Clin North Am. 2011] - PubMed result

Sleep's effects on cognition and learning in adole... [Prog Brain Res. 2011] - PubMed result

Neuropsychological Effects of Sleep Loss: Implicat... [J Int Neuropsychol Soc. 2011] - PubMed result

Muscle Pain and Fatigue from Exercise Makes you Clumsy

This may be another one of those "Duh!" scenarios where research proves the obvious like, "study shows placing hand on hot stove causes burns".


Nevertheless, much of the time we don't make the practical application connection to things that we usually ignore, and for exercise management, fatigue is often viewed as something to conquer by pushing through it rather than resolving through rest, or perhaps by putting a piece of tape on your muscles.


DOMS; delayed onset muscle soreness.. your muscles feel stiff and sore in the days following exercise.   A study in the journal Medicine & Science In Sports & Exercise (1) showed that 48 hours after training muscles with DOMS had a strength reduction of about 21%.  While this has training implications (do you need to rest until you return to full strength before considering training again?), there was another interesting finding.


The study concluded, "Reflex activity in leg muscles elicited by rapid destabilizing perturbations is reduced after exercise-induced muscle soreness."


Translation, you will have less functional stability.  Your ability to respond to high stability demands like playing sports will be reduced, which would increase your risk of injury.


While recovery days can include light or moderate exercise, it's not a good idea to train hard with weights, then play hard in sports the next day.


In another study, this time from the journal Gate and Posture (2), researchers found placing a piece of tape on the ankle of fatigued study subjects allowed them to maintain ankle control.  When no tape was applied, fatigued subjects demonstrated "degraded postural performance", they lost balance more easily. 


How does this work?  Researchers suggest that local muscle fatigue impairs the ability to send relevant postural position information to the brain, and that the skin, if stimulated, can take up the communication corridor slack. 


Does this mean we should keep training and simply tape up our skin to maintain coordinated movement?  I wouldn't go that far.  There is still muscle recovery that requires more time to recover from, and there might be a problem with masking reduced coordination as it may prompt people to train weak and unrecovered muscles, but this information can help therapists and coaches understand and design appropriate recovery protocols. 


(1) Delayed-Onset Muscle Soreness Alters the Response to Postura... : Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise


(2) Degraded postural performance after muscle fatigue can be compensated by skin stimulation