A few years ago I came across a hashtag on Instagram called #30daysofbiking, the purpose then and now is to encourage people to pledge to ride their bikes every day for the month of April. You don’t have to go far. You don’t have to raise money. (Although if you pledge to ride on their website they will donate a small amount to the World Bicycle Relief). All you have to do is ride, and either tweet or Instagram a picture from your ride each day, using the hashtag.
Although I’m not keen on the use of ‘biking’ over ‘cycling’ (not sure why it bothers me, but there we are), I like the simplicity of this challenge. When I did it a few years ago I quickly found that when I said to myself ‘well, I have to go at least once today’ and pulled on my shorts, more often than not, I went further than I planned to. I ended up getting a real head start on my fitness that year, doing a few sportives including a lumpy 100 miler in under 6 hours – in fact the only 100 miler I’ve done to date. Due to a torn disc in my back the year after, I’ve never had as good a year since.
Well, my disc is about as healed as I can ever expect it to be now, so I figured I’d give it another whirl. There’s a few days in the middle of the month when I might be away in Germany for work, but if there’s an exercise bike in the hotel gym, that’s going to have to do.
Let’s do this.
-esp
