I tend to be a goal driven person, at least personally. I'm pretty good and buckling down and doing things as long as there is a definite waypoint I'm trying to reach. I can lose weight "Until I hit 160 lbs." but I'm not nearly as good at "Stay Healthy", that kind of thing... as evidenced by the fact that 6 months after I had hit 160, I was back up to 175.
Since about the beginning of June, I've been trying to be better about exercise and I'm trying to do it a little differently. I'm trying to integrate cycling into my life, inparticular by doing it as part of my commute. I have a 15.5 mile commute to work, mostly along a beautiful, if narrow, road along the Ohio river. My 18 year old Panasonic bike have made the trip about 26 times, as of today, which isn't too bad. Could be better... I've called off for weather, knee pain, "not feeling it", late meetings, early meetings and other things, but I've almost always WANTED to do it. James at work has me beat... he's over 31 days now and he's doing it on a POS mountain bike (sorry, James, it's true) and working a lot harder than I am for his commute (although he rides a shorter distance). I've lost weight, feel better and doing a 75 mile round trip ride to Augusta, KY didn't kill me last weekend like it nearly did in July.
Now I find myself thinking about a new bike, so I set myself a goal. On 8/19, I said that if I finished 1,000 miles on my bike by the end of the year, I'd treat myself to a new ride. So far, things are going fairly well... I'm a little over 250, and it's only early September. I'm beginning to wonder if the goal is a bad idea, though. Partially, I know it's just that I want a new bike... my Dad let me ride his new (well, 1 year old with 3,000+ miles on it, but new by my family's standards) Giant OCR3 and even the low end Giant is such a huge upgrade from my Panasonic, it was hard to switch back. Partially, though, I'm worried that once I get my 1,000 miles and buy the new bike, I'll go into "Mission Accomplished" mode and lose interest.
I don't think I'm going to abandon cycling or commuting... heck, I'm probably just looking for an excuse to go buy a new bike today, but I'm a little concerned... I guess only time will tell.
