Quote Originally Posted by BikerP View Post
Hi!

I have about the same amount to lose as well, a little over 100lb. I started biking in March, about 2 days out of the week, when weather permitted. April was basically no good, because of all the rain we got, but I would try and bike on some days. Now we're in May and so far this week, so good. I currently bike about 7.25 miles to work and that takes me about 34 min, however biking home is horrible. I'm going uphill, even though it doesn't seem like it and that takes me about 50 mins to get home. I'm hoping to decrease that time eventually. I really need advice on what kinds of food to eat, as in should I eat before I bike early in the morning? I usually bike to work, then eat when I get here. Also any warm up exercises would be great to hear about. I'm really excited about biking and this thread/posts are awesome. You guys are amazing!!! After June, I will be biking about 9-10miles to work as we are moving. So as you can see, I'm really going to be putting in a lot of biking hours!
I'm in a similar boat -- I have about 100 lbs to ditch, and I also commute about 20 km round trip 4-5 days a week plus pleasure rides. I don't do any particular stretchs, just a a few touch my toes and arm and shoulder stretches to warm up my back muscles. I usually take the first km easy and then speed up.

I don't like eating before an early morning bike ride because I get naseous, so I wait until I get to work. There's a kitchen at work, so I can nuke some mutligrain cereal with choppped raw almonds, and I bring cut up melon. That tides me over until my breaktime.

My commute to work only takes 40 minutes, but at night it's closer to an hour because of 1 long steep hill, another steadily rising climb, and then two more steep but short hills. The first hill I walk because it is too far for me to ride up without tripping over (and I have). The rest I can do ... now. It took plenty of practice and sheer will (I wanna be home -- that's my mantra).

I learned on this forum (BTW, thanks everyone!) about sparkspeople.com. The advice is good, but I like the tools provided to personalize my own goals, and personal bugaboos (chocolate), and you can rack up points (don't know what they do, but I am a rabid collector of pretty much anything, so rack 'em up I go!).

And, even neater, you get your own blogspace to record, share, and brag. Mine is my.sparkpeople.com/CYCLOKITTY. And I like visitors!

Have fun riding!