Tuesday, September 2, 2008

We're sweating now...

Thursday evening saw the arrival of a new addition to our living room furniture.... My new exercise bike.

My list of requirements for this bike wasn't all that large: 1. Strong enough to hold up my rather substantial body. 2. Cheap.

After a bit of searching, I came across my bike on the website of the Mecca of cheap - Walmart.com It had some good reviews from other..... large people I guess you could say. Most importantly, it hadn't collapsed under anybody's weight as of yet.

Now you thin people out there may not understand this consideration, but this type of issue is a reality for us non slender individuals. Case in point - Saturday night I leaned over a little too far while sitting in my trusty computer chair and inflicted a fatal injury on the poor thing. It was trying gamely to continue on, but from the time I heard the sickening crack come from one of the legs, I knew I would have to put her out of her misery.

I'd hate to see what havoc would occur if I did similar damage while pedaling madly on my exercise bike. I could just see pieces flying everywhere - possibly impaling innocent bystanders - or even worse, my television.

Comforted by its reported strength, I embarked upon the process known as "some assembly".

The first thing I noticed is that the eight year old Chinese kid who put the parts in the box forgot one simple item - the instructions.

Now, your average man would say, "Screw it - I can figure this out". Ten hours later, after considerable swearing, sweating, and threatening the life of the Asian engineer who designed the bike, he would end up with something that was a cross between a blender and a Picasso.

I however, am not your average man. (Actually I'm probably about 1.5 average men...) With my superior knowledge, and previous failures at non-instruction manual assisted assemblies, I knew there was a simple solution - the internet! A quick search found me a copy of the instructions, and soon after I completed a successful assembly.

Of course there was the thought in my head during the assembly that once I finished putting it together, I was actually supposed to ride the bike. This was not a pleasant thought.

As it turns out though, the actual riding hasn't been that bad.

I set a goal of 20 minutes a night for the first week or so, regardless of distance or speed. I've been able to keep that up this weekend without too much of a problem. Next week I'll bump it to half an hour.

My goal is to get to 10 miles a night within the next month or so. If I can keep up the same pace I have been doing, that should take me about 45 minutes.

After that I'll move on to actual running. Unless of course I have a heart attack before then.

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