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Comment by drblast | Hacker News Reader

I'm almost 40 and I've been snowboarding and skateboarding off and on for most of my life. Recently it's been all snowboarding which I love and will never stop doing.

A few years ago I started skateboarding again to keep in shape for snowboarding in the summer. I'm writing this from bed as I'm recovering from an ACL replacement due to a fall I took skateboarding at that time.

I agree with the "do what you want to" sentiment but sports like skateboarding are a matter of when you'll get injured, not if. And those injuries have an impact on other things you might want to do. So be careful.

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This is why us 40 somethings all take up road cycling. Less stress on the body but the gear and exhilaration is still there. MTB is still very tempting but the falls are more frequent.

I see the appeal of road cycling and I investigated it (I'm in a bike-friendly city that hosts road cycling events) but feel put off by:

- Sharing roads with fast heavy vehicles at speed.

- Lycra.

- The expense. A good road bike seems to cost ~10× more than a great skateboard or longboard (but about the same as an electric longboard).

- Friends who've had big crashes on the road; intuitively it feels like it should be safer than mountain biking, but I'm not so sure.

Mountain biking is wayyy safer. You're way more likely to get bruises and bumps, but much less likely to get put in the hospital for a month (or worse).

You don't need to become a MAMIL or even buy expensive gear to road ride. I cycle on a $250 mountain bike in running shorts and a singlet. I'll wear jeans and a jumper if it's cold. Crashes are a reality, the same as driving a car. I've never had a crash with another road user, sometimes people don't see me but they don't see me in my car or motorbike either. You can ride with lights and hi-vis gear if you feel the need to.

Pothole crashes happen; it's easy to get mental hypnosis out there on the long rides. Route selection and choosing a low traffic time of day is your best defense against cars, but some drivers are just bad drivers. There's no dodging that risk, but it helps if you're willing to drive out of your way to find empty, nice routes.

I hike many rail-to-trail conversions on asphalt, sometimes gravel, thru the mountains, sharing the paved trail with roughly equal numbers of bikers. That solves many of your problems, while creating others. It would be financially advisable to research fees if any as tickets can be expensive. If you like bicycling in groups/crowds you enter the trail in a urban area, if you want to experience empty trails enter the trail from a rural farm county park.

I don't road bike but AFAIK the cheapest way to have a bike that weighs one pound less isn't hyper-expensive materials but diet based weight loss about a month ago. In the spirit of the old weight lifting joke, or maybe wisdom, that illegal steroid use might make you look like you have an extra year's lifting experience while causing significant medical problems, and in that context the medically safest replacement for illegal steroid use that gets you to the same place without any medical danger is simply to start lifting one year earlier, and a lot of money is made in the market convincing people that patience is not an alternative.

THIS. There has been an explosion in rail trails development over the last decade or so. Check out https://www.railstotrails.org for help finding one. Also, pick up a gravel or touring bike from a company like surly or salsa, and it becomes less about the weight of your bike and more about where you can go...

> Sharing roads with fast heavy vehicles at speed.

Carefully plot your routes.

> Lycra.

No need for that bs, a t-shirt, jeans and good shoes are all you need.

> The expense. A good road bike seems to cost ~10× more than a great skateboard or longboard (but about the same as an electric longboard).

You can buy great used bikes for relatively little money. I just bought a top of the line roadbike that's a bit older for $200 which I used regularly, another for $150, which I converted into a hometrainer:

https://jacquesmattheij.com/trainification

Don't fret about the quality of the bike, until you reach competition level it is totally unimportant. I regularly pass people on much better bikes with all the goodies and just yesterday I in turn was passed by someone in at least their sixties on a bike that was much older than mine and I wouldn't have been able to catch him no matter how hard I tried. The bike rarely matters.

> Friends who've had big crashes on the road; intuitively it feels like it should be safer than mountain biking, but I'm not so sure.

I've crashed pretty hard about 2 years ago. It was my own fault, riding a recumbent on a regular road. Still, I got lucky, broke my leg badly but nothing else.

You probably already know this, but if you're road cycling any distance at all, lycra is your friend. When you cross 85-100mi, the quality of your clothing makes all the difference in the world.

The vast majority of the people I see riding on Saturdays and Sundays on their $4K bikes dressed out like they're leading the charge for the Tour de France tend to do distances where there really is no difference in what you wear. My own trips max out at about 100k / day and I'm far more worried about sunburn, flats, insect swarms or getting caught in bad weather than I am about skin abrasion, absorption or cooling.

If you do go for competition cycling then maybe it is worth it to you to spend the extra $ but for the most part it seems to me that people just love to have an excuse to spend their $ to look like they are professional athletes.

Their bellies usually tell a different story, but fortunately for them lycra seems to stretch really well ;)

You ride 100KM in jeans without chafing?

Learn from MTB riders - padded lycra pants and some shorts on top :) Doesn't look completely ridiculous and still comfortable after 3h.

I'm a pot-bellied Fred who wears full spandex and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I applaud you, I just don't like it, so I'll compromise - I'm only judging my own looks :)

I don't doubt that it looks ridiculous, merely because the opinion is so widely held and expressed, but function dictates form in this instance.

Well, you've got my vote. I merely wanted to point out that an expensive outfit is not a requirement to starting out cycling and that you can do some pretty good rides without. If it works for you then that's great, and I'm happy to see you cycling, whatever you're wearing. The activity is what matters. If you ever make it to my neck of the woods consider yourself invited for a trip.

Yes, absolutely no problem. Did it this Sunday, and many others besides.

The only time I've had chafing issues was when doing a circle around the 'IJsselmeer' in one day. That was bad. But I was also peeing green and out for the count for the next day so enough time to heal up :)

Who said anything about jeans? Try the Nike store.

Thank you for this — you've made me think again, and I enjoyed your blog post.

Just need to find somewhere to store a road bike along with the skis, skateboards, snowboards, and mountain bikes now…

An easy fix for the storage problem is to hoist them up against the garage ceiling or to hang them on a wall. If you're really space constrained you can always drop out the wheels and store those separately, that only takes a few seconds. Make sure you tighten the clamps well after putting the wheels in, that will take some trial and error in the beginning.

Another thing, if you're shopping for bikes is to check for new-old-stock, sometimes you can get crazy discounts on bikes that are only one or two years old thanks to the 'fashionista's' who wouldn't be caught dead on a bike that isn't of the latest model year and in the latest colors.

To be fair a half decent set of cycle shorts will be lycra and have a padded crotch. You can get quite sweaty on a longs, so the lycra reduces chaffing and the padding just makes things more comfortable. I usually wear something over the top as its not a good look on guys in my opinion, but they are pretty practical.

> MTB is still very tempting but the falls are more frequent.

Falls aren't any more frequent riding XC than on a road bike. I'm about to turn 40 and I much prefer the flow of good singletrack over tarmac any day.

They're definitely more frequent on mtb but when you crash on the road you really know about it.

I think the frequency of falling in mountain biking is relative to how often you go out and push yourself to get better. You could just ride easy trails, don’t try to set record speeds on the downhills, and your chances of crashing are pretty slim (disclaimer: I’ve been riding flats for 20 years, so it has always been easy for me to put my foot down when things get squirrelly!) Road biking on the other hand, gives you significantly less control over what takes you down. Often it’s a car, not your own fault.

Noted, thanks, and I'll take care. (My sister took up skateboarding and broke her arm the next week, so I'm aware of the risks. The fun is still worth it for me at the moment.)

Not using your body into old age also carries risks, of course, but I accept there are safer ways of staying active than skateboarding. (Am also a skier and snowboarder, so doing it for much the same reasons as you. Hope you heal up ok!)

I've been skateboarding vert ramps most of my life (our ramp is pictured at the top of my site https://vertramp.org/). To avoid getting seriously hurt, (1) religiously wear pads (even wrists guards) and a helmet if you skate bowls or ramps, and (2) don't push yourself too hard beyond your current level. Pushing hard can result in learning more quickly, but it's also a good way to end up hurt, which has serious consequences at our age (I'm 44). I skate all the time with other vert skaters around my age; there's a ton of us (since vert was huge in the 1980s), and it is a very welcoming community. It seems like each year I do deal with one nontrivial injury - for 2017 it was that my knees just started to ache a LOT from my knee pads getting yanked when knee sliding on birch, which was the surface of our ramp before we put skatelite on it. In any case, you have to watch out both for traumatic injuries (where pads help) and more subtle injuries from longterm stress to your body. Skateboarding in your 40s is definitely very doable, especially if you optimize for having fun and getting exercise more than trying to be Bucky Lasek, who is older than both of us and a top pro.

Skateboarding is dangerous, but at least on a ramp or bowl, there aren't cars that can kill you in an instant, and (unlike surfing or snowboarding) where you are riding is mostly predictable and under control.

Thanks for the advice! I'm not skating vert yet (mostly street and cruising) but I'm very much tempted by it as there are a couple of good parks nearby. I'll be sure to pad up and stay within my limits.

And, yes, no illusions about becoming Bucky Lasek (45) or Tony Hawk (49); I started way too late to go pro and have other things I'm good at. It's about fun, fitness, friends, and cutting down journey times on foot for me.

Yes, exactly that and the reason I turned to the guitar after turning 50. I'm hoping it will help to keep my heart young, without the added physical risks!

I'm in the same situation - skateboarded from my mid-teens to my early thirties, twenty years give or take, then moved to the Swiss Alps so took up snowboarding. I don't skate anymore, so spend the summer doing short bike rides to keep fit for the winter season.

And I agree, know many skateboarders my age who have had knee ops. So far I've been OK, but I know it's only a matter of time.

Were your friends wearing knee protectors? And if not, were the knee injuries the sort that would have been prevented (or lessened) by knee protectors?

Yes. And,

When I was younger, I would over-train, recover quickly, repeat (I run, weight train, cycle).

Now, I don't heal so fast. Instead, I try to maximize my strength and fitness while simultaneously minimizing injuries.

At this age, I look at it as a fun constrained optimization problem. So, the added intellectual challenge, required to be physically active while aging, I quite enjoy.

Best wishes to heal soon and be back on the board!

>And those injuries have an impact on other things you might want to do.

what are those other things? i hope i don't get injured so i can keep playing sports - not dancing or walking around paris or etc. seems circular

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