After taking quite sometime away from it I am officially back on my bike today. My bus ticket ran out so instead of renewing it I bought brakes for my bicycle and repaired them. When it comes to bicycles I consider them to be disposable items. The reason for this is that it's cheaper to buy a bike for ~£100, ride it into the ground (usually between 2,000 and 3,000 miles) toss it and buy a new one than it is to get an expensive one and maintain it. Brake pads are about the only thing I'll replace on a bike. Don't get me wrong though, I keep it in reasonable nick, I just don't repair it. My current one is dicing with death thoguh as 2 of the spokes on the back wheel have snapped but it still appears to be ridable.
Anyway, getting back to cycling to work has many advantages. To start with I'm forced into 30 mins cardio twice a day, 5 times a week. There's no way around that. Secondly I'm going to save a fortune in bus fares (£45/month) and no longer be beholden to a bus timetable. Which is nice. Further, thanks to the governments everybody be green policies, I can claim 20 pence a mile in expenses for cycling, which is pretty sweet.
It takes my 5 minutes longer to cycle than it does to take the bus, currently. It's been 4 months since I've cycled to work so I expect that number will decline as I get fitter. I certainly need to, all but killed me this morning. It's mostly uphill to work and about 6 miles, I was more than a little wrecked when I arrived.
I'm hoping that this will have a serious impact on the spare tyre around my middle. Stopping cycling is when it appeared so now that I've started again it will hopefully help it deflate.
I have also decided that I'm most likely having a bacon roll for breakfast. I slept like crap the last couple of nights and am feeling good about myself for having cycled to work.
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