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Comment by madengr | Hacker News Reader

The part about making it part of your daily routine is spot-on. I cycled to work for 15 years, and felt much healthier with lower stress.

Then my employer moved from 6 miles away to 12, and have two kids in elementary school. Now I feel like shit, overweight, and guess I'll die younger.

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I've got a similar problem -- used to live 15 miles from my employer, which would get me to work in slightly over an hour. Current address and employer is 22 - 25 miles apart (depending on route).

Solution: cheat a little bit. I've converted to an e-bike (added a hub motor kit). You can set it up so that it gives you assistance, but still requires peddling. Upshot in your case, is you can get a 6-mile workout, while traveling 12 miles (you basically ride in a higher gear, so you go faster/further for a given effort level).

I've also seen people get an extended-length cargo bicycle, add the electric assist, and use it to take the kids to where they need to go along with getting a few days worth of groceries.

I'm getting ready to test out commuting 14 miles, but with an electric bike. Traffic is horrendous here and the metro has been awful. Both take 1hr+ on good days. I'm willing to sacrifice the battery so I don't sweat when I arrive and then use my commute back to get exercise :) I hope it works out.

I've been commuting electric 11 miles each way for over a year. In my time I've found limiting myself to 18-20mph pedal assisted is the best use of my battery and my body. I still get some workout but not enough to sweat through my clothes. The bike averages 400w consumption and I've gotten used to running bigger batteries than my commute needs. Currently I'm running Multistar Lipo's at 12s2p for 50v charged and 20ah max range. I consume 6-8ah daily.

That's really good to hear, I got nervous reading your stats and usage as my configuration will have less range than yours. But a little back of napkin with your input looks like I have just enough to make it there and back utilizing PAS. It's all up in the air until I try, but I think I'll bring the charger to work on the first day to be sure.

I only have 7 miles and use an electrical bike anyway since it makes me sweat less and still maintain good speed. Works great.

Daily routine is so important.

I had one year in particular where I was both cycling to work every day (10km round trip) and cycling to school 2-3x a week (50km round trip). I lost ~30lb in about six months. In fact, as I wasn't trying to lose weight, I didn't even realize I'd been losing so much weight for a few months, and mentally doing that wasn't hard at all - just felt like a normal routine (certainly helped that cycling was often my fastest way to get to both work and school, and almost always a close second).

I'm sorry that you're feeling this way - having to compromise on health for a job is never fun :(.

I don't know anything about your specific circumstances, but depending on what your daily route to work looks like, you might be able to make it work with a special bike. There are fast cargo bikes which fit two children and could even be outfitted with an electric motor (e.g. http://www.larryvsharry.com/). Or the obvious solution, road bike + trailer.

Sorry to ask a silly question, is it possible to say drive halfway then cycle the rest? Bit of setup issues like bike rack etc but will mean you can still cycle to work and feel good.

I don't think that's silly at all - its precisely what I'm planning to do so I can work up to cycling the ~20 miles each way to work (NB not every day!).

That is actually quite a common practice in Germany. There are some car parks just on the outskirts of a large city that is always 50% full of cars with some form of bike carrier attached to it.

I'd honestly switch employers if I couldn't bike to work. The difference in my current and future happiness is too great.

Or move.

You can't bike 12 miles in because... ? I'd say give it a try.

Where I live, my 14 mile commute requires traveling on a highway. To avoid the highway (not an interstate, legally can bike on, but too dangerous for me to cycle on, people here are dicks to cyclists), would push the distance to 20 miles. East of the highway is a no-go because of wetlands, west of the highway is the only option but due to some other wetlands and farms pushes me much further west.

I don't bike much anymore, but my daily routine is to drive to about 4 or 5 miles from work and walk the rest of the way. If you have a bike rack for your car...

Unfortunately not an option on this route. By the time I got around the highway areas I'm practically at the office. I already exercise (well, currently recovering from a couple injuries so not this much) about 8-10 hours a week so this isn't that critical for me. I could bring the bike to the office and cycle around the area (it's actually much better for that than where I live, but nearby housing is prohibitively expensive or crime-ridden neighborhoods), but that's just shifting the sort of exercising I'm doing.

Are you in the US, and in a major metro area? You don't have to say where, but I'm having fun guessing, and if you're commuting to, say, a place like Biloxi, I might as well give up now. My best guess currently is that you're commuting from northeast of Philly.

Hah, not a major metro area. The problem is that I live in one city (much better social life) and work in another (much better pay). Small cities, both (50-100k people, large town some might say). Along the highway connecting them (well, the parts of them that I care about), the east side has a lot of farmland, timberland, and wetlands with poor quality roads or that take me way east before I can cut back. To the west is primarily industrial land with some farmland, same problem. The most useful (for biking) north/south roads are about 1-2 miles off the highway at the start. But they trend west, so I have to come back 2-4 miles when I want to cut towards the office.

It takes an hour by bike an forty minutes by car. That's forty minutes a day you could be spending with your children instead.

This calculation is incomplete. You missing the live prolongation effect of cycling. 40 min a day 5 days a week for 40 years is ~290 days. The plus side is in years dimension. With cycling you have more overall live time with your children.

You don't get back the time you lose with your children when they're young. Spending time with adult offspring cannot possibly be the same, especially if they move and you actually don't get to spend that time with them. Your best bet is that you'll recoup the lost time with grandchildren.

I'm not saying it's a bad tradeoff. In addition to living longer, staying fit makes you a better model for your children and increases the quality of the time you spend with them.

Also the extra energy from being fit all the time means you can actually do meaningful outdoor activities with your child, instead of being a fat potato on the couch.

Lifetime with children is more valueable when the children are younger.

I would be more than happy if my father had been cycling and would be still with us today.

> That's forty minutes a day you could be spending with your children instead.

Not if you're dead...

All morbid jokes aside, it's important to take care of yourself so you can take care of your kids. If you're not going to bike to work, spend that extra forty minutes biking with your kids or throwing them around the yard.

I don't want to accuse you of not exercising or using your kids as an excuse to not take care of yourself, but it's really easy to unintentionally do just that.

That's almost exactly my situation. I solved it by stealing the time from that period after the kids go to bed -- in other words I go to bed earlier and wake up earlier. I couldn't do that in previous years because I was needed for morning routine but now that the kids are out of day care and all going to the same school I can leave early.

That's two hours of exercise in forty minutes of your time.

Yes, but you'll likely sleep better and be a better (because health!) parent in both the long run and the short run. And, as pointed out previously, you're getting 2 hours of exercise at the cost of 40 extra minutes (which you should be getting anyway).

don't you get more time at home because your daily workout is done?

You also don't have to do it every day. Do it two or three times a week.

But that gets back to the whole point of the daily routine. I bike to and from work at times, but it always comes in blocks - when I do it, I do it every day. Once I fall off the wagon, it takes me time to get back on again. I couldn't say why, it's an odd psychological phenomenon.

I bike to work every day that it isn't raining.

So sometimes when the weather is bad I won't ride for a week. I'm usually depressed by the end of those weeks. :-(

By always doing it a specific day or days maybe part of this can be achieved? Like always biking to job Monday and Wednesday so it becomes natural?

Of course not as good as a daily routine, but maybe could work as a compromise.

But just imagine where you might be without those 15 years. When the kids are older you can maybe switch stuff up? For their sake?

Get an electric bike?

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