tips for the time crunched cyclist

[pipa]

Dear friends,
I am a single mom to a young child, and time is at an ultimate premium. On weekends that he is not with his dad (every other weekend) any cycling is out of the question. I have recently re-invented the wheel (pardon the pun) and am doing my best to make time to cycle between 4pm and 5:30 when I must pick up child.

What is best for a seriously time crunched cyclist? Right now I am scheduling one hour on MWF, and every other weekend I put in another 3 hours.

Is there a better regimen or way of distributing time on the bike?

Right now I spend those precious one hour sessions climbing. On weekends when I can go 2-3 hours in a row i allow myself some zooming flats.

[lph]

Commuting by bike, even if only once a week. Riding with your child in a bike trailer (and that is good exercise, believe me). Doable at all?

[hebe]

Hello and welcome to TE :)

What lph said, really. Riding with a trailer isn't particularly fast, but it really does give you a good workout, and also gets your little one used to going out by bike.

[Blueberry]

Get a trainer for your bike so you can ride early mornings/when he's otherwise occupied, but with you? Also get some Spinervals workouts so you can get some good, focused workouts in?

If you don't want to do that, I might swap one of your climbing rides for intervals (others have better descriptions of how to do that than I do - but the idea is to really push the pace for short periods of time, recover for a little while, rinse, repeat).

[Wahine]

Get a trainer for your bike so you can ride early mornings/when he's otherwise occupied, but with you? Also get some Spinervals workouts so you can get some good, focused workouts in?


Plus one. Having a trainer set up that you can get on, do a few drills to improve efficiency and maybe some short but HARD intervals would help a lot.

I love lph's suggestion of commuting too.

[leah]

Another single mom here. I know it costs $ but I get babysitters or use drop-in child care so I can participate in cycling events and do my weekend rides when it is not a dad weekend. I will skimp on other things so I can afford the child care, and my son loves his babysitter so I don't feel too guilty. Then again I have my kid 75% of the time so I don't feel so bad about leaving him to ride. Plus he thinks it's cool that I ride bikes fast! :D

I can't afford babysitting for a century ride but I do invest in half centuries and events that are <4 hours. Also can you possibly swap child care with mama friends every other weekend so you can get a long ride in every weekend?

[BodhiTree]

A child trailer can truly change your (and your son's) life.

They are quite cheap at consignment shops.