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Share Your Solo Activities With A Group

Posted June 23, 2008 at 03:00 PM by Martinique Haller

Section: Her Fitness, Athletics, Her Health, Her Motivation

It’s fun to share your favorite sport or workout with other people. There are a lot of activities that can be done solo and it can feel good for it to be just you and your kayak, or your bike, or own two legs pounding the trail. Going solo means you can push yourself against your internal limits, or your old record, oryour heart rate; it’s all about you.  When you get out with other people, though you might discover that your own limits are a little further that you realized, or you may learn something that you didn’t even realize you wanted to know. To get outside in a group really recharges and invigorates me.

This Sunday I went on a group ride with about eight other cyclists. I donned my spandex, and set out to meet up with everyone at a local bike shop. I was glad that this was a fun ride (though not a leisure ride) so that I could still enjoy myself instead of heaving up a lung trying to keep up with people training for a big race.  I introduced myself to the people I didn’t know and we set out at 7:30 on Sunday morning. The rain looked like it might hold, but it didn’t.  A light rain fell on us for the first half hour, but there wasn’t any lightening and it was nice enough outside that it wasn’t a good enough reason to stop riding.

The camaraderie of a group ride is the most enjoyable part- that and not having to decide where to go. We fell in line like synchronized swimmers, all signaling a right turn in fall-out fashion.  Sometimes, we rode two-by-two and talked while we rode, and other times our neat group would stretch out just a bit into two smaller groups before closing the gap again.  I love the helpful calls of “car back!” or “clear!”—aspects of a group ride that make me feel safer than I do alone.  We’re also a much larger presence, so cars are able to see us more easily than a lone biker.  We had stops and starts because of the stop signs, traffic lights or the occasional cross-street with traffic, and we had a few straight-aways.  I had to turn back early to get to work on some papers for graduate school but got a full twenty miles in. 

In the near north suburbs of Chicago, there are more than a few packs of cyclists on an early Sunday morning. Seeing all the cyclists is invigorating. It’s good to know how many other people think it’s worth it to set an alarm on a Sunday morning. Most of the riders I ride with are more experienced than I am, so I push myself to keep up, and I ask questions and learn more. Everyone is eager to share and to help because they love cycling, too, which makes the entire experience a great one.  When you love what you do, twenty miles just slips away.

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Tags: biking, cycing, group activities, group rides, martinique haller, teams

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