Blogging About Fitness

Ride you bike to work part 2

Nate Astle — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:45:56 GMT

The other day I was reading an article on how the sale of scooters have been increasing and decided to look into the cost of owning and operating a scooter to see if it would be beneficial to purchase a scooter. While discussing this someone brought the idea up of getting an electric bike. Since I am riding my bike to work I want to make things a little easier and decided to look into the cost of adding an electric conversion kit to my bike.

To start here is a chart that I created to help analyze the cost of the various modes of transportation. I did not factor in other costs involved like insurance, registration, repairs, and other information. I am also assuming that you will need to have a car as well as a scooter as most people do not ride a scooter or e-bike in bad weather. I did not factor out days of bad weather from the calculations and I am assuming normal commute mileage (20 miles a day X 52 weeks a year with 2 week time off).

	Car	Scooter	Ebike
Price	15000	2500	1200
MPG	25	80	n/a
Price of Gas	4	4	n/a
Cost per Mile	0.16	0.05	0.005
Miles Per Year	5000	5000	5000
Cost per year	800	250	25
Time to recoup gas cost vs. Car	N / A	4.5 Years	1.5 Years

All prices are in US dollar

As you can see off this chart is that it will take 4 ½ years to recoup the cost of the scooter. This can be done sooner if you move it over to be the only mode of your transportation and never drive a car again. I do not think this happens when people buy a scooter. If you are really looking into saving money consider getting an electric bike or converting your existing bike. The cost is lower and will help out the environment much more. Indirectly you are still using gas to power your scooter but not as much as a combustible engine, plus it still gives you a chance to work out. There are plenty of videos on YouTube that will show you how it works.

I have not tried an electric bike but the technology is there and you can get speeds of 20 – 30 mph. Some sites to check out are www.bionx.ca or http://www.crystalyte.com . Remember to check out the regulations on speed of bike and wattage before buying as to remain legal. From what I have read the max speed is 20 mph and 750 watts in the US before you have to get insurance and registration.

Ride Your Bike To Work

Nate Astle — Thu, 08 May 2008 17:13:37 GMT

Lately it’s been really monotonous to do a gym workout. To break the monotony I started to ride my bike to work. It’s about 10 miles away and it is a challenging workout. It gives a different feel than riding a bike at the gym. This also cuts out using a gallon of gas a day, which is good for my pocket book. I would say it helps the environment but for one car to leave the road is hardly helping.

If you are looking at saving some money in your pocket book start by riding your bike to work, even if it is one or 2 days a week. It is a great experience and will help you stay healthy.

When riding your bike remember a few simple things:

- Carry a spare tire / patch kit with you as well as a pump.

- Keep your bike tuned up

- Always watch out for traffic.

- Check the weather forecast the night before / day of.

- Leave earlier than normal.

- Carry a spare tire / patch kit

I can’t tell you how many times I have been saved by doing this. There is nothing worse than leaving work and going to your bike only to see a flat tire. There are a lot of ways to prevent this such as the green stuff you can buy to put inside of your tire and even buy tires with it in. There are also Armadillo tires that work really well at keeping the flat tires away.

- Keep your bike tuned up

The main reason to do this is the wheels on your bike don’t always stay round. With the spoke model the spokes will come loose the more you ride. This is very true in new wheels. Make sure you keep your bike wheels trued. This will help reduce the amount of energy it takes to move your bike. Keep your chain well lubed. It takes a lot of effort to move your bike. If you have a chain that is hard to move around then it will be hard on you. Check your brake pads. Just like a car these wear out and make it harder to stop. Make sure your brakes are tight. As you use your bike the cables become loose and you will need to tighten up the cables. This is also true for your front and rear derailleur. If you take care of these basic things your bike will take care of you.

- Always watch out for traffic

Not everyone is watching out for bikes so make sure you watch out for traffic, especially driveways. I have been hit s few times by cars not paying attention and it is not a fun experience. I have learned to slow down on intersections and occasionally look back to make sure there are no cars ready to turn right.

- Leave a little earlier than normal

I found it takes me twice as long to get to work when I ride my bike. It’s not a big deal since it is a 15 minute drive in but you may not be expecting it. Also it helps if you can leave your office a little bit earlier than normal to avoid the rush hour traffic. I found coming home seems to be more dangerous than going to work. There are more cars on the road and the only thing they can think about is getting home as soon as possible.

Remember, riding your bike is something enjoyable to do and is great exercise at the same time. The more people that ride their bikes to work the sooner the infrastructure will change to accommodate more bikes on the road.

45 /2 / 20 Quick workout

Nate Astle — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 02:00:51 GMT

Back when I was in the Army I had a commander that was upset about people not being in top physical condition. He was strong into promoting his 45 / 2 / 20 workout routine. This workout routing consists of 3 things, 45 seconds of pushups, 2 minutes of sit-ups, and 20 minutes of running 3 times a week. This workout is great; it’s something easy to do and is easy to get started since you do not need any equipment. I have found that for most people 45 seconds is as many pushups as you can do as well with 2 minutes of sit-ups. 20 minutes of running should be fairly easy especially if you break it up with walking.

The best part is it’s easy to set goals. If this is the first time working out, start small. Some people can not do regular pushups, if this is the case go to your knees and work your way up to doing regular pushups. After you are able to do regular pushups set goals on how many you can do. This is the same with sit-ups. If you have a hard time doing full sit-ups, substitute crunches. Crunches are less stressful on your lower back. With running set distance goals and try to beat your distance goals every time you run.

It is not required to be a member of a gym or have expensive equipment in order to workout. You can do a workout with no equipment and still get the same kind of workout you get at a gym. Remember to stay motivated during your workouts.

BodyBugg® review

Nate Astle — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 15:33:08 GMT

Over the past few weeks I have been able to use the BodyBugg® and get a feel for what it does and how it works. After seeing it used on the Biggest Looser I figured I would write a review about it incase anyone else is interested. To give a little bit of background on how I got the device (since I will not spend the 400 dollars for the 3 months to use the device) I talked with a local company and am doing a study with some new dietary supplements they are coming out with and they are bundling the BodyBugg with their new supplements. In other words I did not pay for this device but have the chance to use it for free for the next few months.

We will start off with the pros of the BodyBugg:

1. It counts calories. In the simplest form it calculates the amount of steps you have taken in a day and does some calculations against your weight.

2. The user interface has some menu ideas that are easy to follow.

3. There are graphs that show you your daily nutritional intake and where you are at.

And now the con’s:

1. The price. The cost of the device is 400 dollars for a 3 month subscription and the device. If you want to keep on using the site it is an additional 200 dollars for every 3 months. I don’t know about you but that is really steep for me.

2. Entering in the food you ate can be difficult, meaning there is no item list view. It is based on queries of what is commonly used. For example, if I had corn with my dinner I do not get the choice of the vegetable until I get passed the first 20 items. I have learned it takes some creative queries on food in order to get what you want. Also the query is a form of AJAX, meaning after so many letters it will bring back a list of items. This has some design flaws in it. If you misspell a word and go back and fix it there is no way to force it to do the query.

3. Ummmm did I mention the price? 400 dollars for 3 months and then your device is useless.

4. Error messages are ambiguous. When I got the device I had to register it on the website. In the registration process I got an error message saying unexpected error please try again later or call customer support. So I called customer support which, surprisingly I was only on hold for a few minutes (2 – 3) waiting for someone to answer. After talking with customer service for over 20 minutes and having them try many different things they finally realized they changed the way things work and I had to fill out a few surveys first before I could register the device. They should not let you register your device until you fill those out or give better error messages.

5. The device is a glorified pedometer. You can find much cheaper software on the internet that will do the same thing, the only difference is the BodyBugg has a interface that will plug into the computer and show you a graph of the steps you have taken throughout the day and at what times.

After using the device I would not spend the money for this device or will I suggest others to do so. I find it to be a waste of money and could think of better things to do with my money and could write a better interface for the device.

Parkour

Nate Astle — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 03:07:17 GMT

Growing up playing video games I could only dream of doing stunts like this. After seeing a news article on this it made me realize this is something that I would of liked to of done when I was younger. This seems to be a happy median between rock climbing, gymnastics, and running. When I was younger I use to do a lot of rock climbing and I never knew this sport existed. It makes me want to get back into rock climbing and start training in Parkour. This is a sport that more and more people are getting into. With that it is a sport that needs training and discipline. There are many sites out on the Internet that talk about this sport. One of the fathers of this sport is David Belle.

As you can tell this is a sport not for the beginners in the fitness world. Before starting to train it is a good idea to be in somewhat of a physical condition, know your limitations, and don't try anything that you know you can not do. As you train in any sports it is a good idea to know what your limitations are and what you can and can not do. Remember to stay safe and not to do anything stupid.