Beginning to cycle

After our first Sinhagad trek, my trainer suggested that we buy a cycle, and that we also include cycling in our activity. He convinced me that cycling would be easier on the knees. Now, mind you, I have not cycled ever since I finished school - so that was many many years ago. Well, actually that's not entirely true. I had once before tried cycling when I was in California. I had bought a cycle, and had planned to cycle to work everyday since my workplace was just a 10 mins ride away. And it was on internal roads, so I had thought it would be fun and some exercise at the same time. But that attempt had completely flopped. Somehow, I wasn't able to enjoy the cycling experience, and had ended up giving my cycle to a friend.

So, this time, I was extremely skeptical about cycling. But my trainer started with teaching the basics - this is a hybrid cycle with gears. He made sure the cycle was the correct frame size for my height. The height of the seat was properly adjusted. And then showed me the proper way to use gears. With his technique, we ended up cycling all the way to Nanded City, and inside Nanded City and back home. We cycled almost 25-26 kms on the first ride. It was a wonderful experience. Cycling felt good! Cycling is a little deceptive though - it doesn’t feel that taxing while doing it, but I was tired afterwards. And oh… since I wasn’t used to it - it really hurt the bums - it was hard to sit. But within a couple of days, it was a little better. I even went for a small solo cycle ride on Tuesday of about 4-5 kms. Solo ride was fun too. I think solo rides are a wonderful time to clear your head and feel the wind on your face.

First Sinhagad Trek

Its now been a month and half since I started personal training, and so far it has been a wonderful experience. Before starting the sessions, I'd started having a pain in my neck from all the sitting in front of a computer. Also, had knee pain from an old injury. Actually the injury was in my left knee, which had recovered. But to compensate, I'd gotten used to stressing the right knee, and now the right knee was causing problems. The weight wasn't helping the knee. I also remember my back pain...once I got into bed, turning around was a big affair. It really hurt to turn, the sleep quality was bad - I was getting up 4-5 times at night. During the first session itself, my trainer assessed all the pain areas, and before starting any exercise, he addressed the pain. Gradually, with the stretching and the strengthening, the pain started to reduce and I started feeling more energetic. Pain is like leaking energy - it just drains the energy out of us. Once the pain stopped, I realized how much more energy I started to have. We could then concentrate on the strength training. Focus was on core strength, hands and legs. I started getting stronger..

One day, within a month of training, he suggested we go and trek up Sinhagad. I didn't really feel ready, but decided to go ahead with the plan. And we made a plan to go on a Saturday afternoon. He kept the atmosphere light, no pressure - and we started. Our goal that day was to just trek up, not check how long it took us to get there. We stopped at multiple times on the way, but stopped before feeling completely drained. So there was never a need to sit down. After 2 hours and 40 minutes, we reached all the way up. I think even after I reached up, there was still disbelief that I actually climbed all the way up. That was on Feb 10th 2018.

To me, that was a big achievement. Esp given that just the Dec before, we had an office party at our Sinhagad farmhouse. We had some guests who were visiting from US, Israel etc. So the plan was to take them on Sinhagad by car, and then drive down and have dinner at the farmhouse. But someone had told me that even after going by car, there was still a lot of walking/climbing that needed to be done. And I didn’t have the confidence to even walk that much, so I didn’t even go by car! And I just waited for everyone at the farmhouse.

So go to from this state in Dec to actually climbing up Sinhagad was indeed a wonderful and great achievement for me. And if I can do it, anyone can!!