Why bike? Man up and run everywhere.
What are you doing, running ultra-marathons?
Perhaps that is why running injuries are so common ? You can't keep pushing yourself to deadlift more, for example, without it being painfully obvious your form is not right. And you just know that the person looking back in the mirror should not deadlift 315 lbs. But with running there is no obvious indication and the environmental factors keep changing. Then you're spending months stiff and in pain. You feel 20 years old one week and 90 years old the next.
https://obdurodon.silvrback.com/winter-running-part-1
Again, thanks for your help.
It injures people in training (degrading readiness), and often leaves veterans with debilitating life-long lower-body problems that also cost the government a fortune in disability payments.
I've watched several Green Berets on YouTube state fitness goals for SF training of "You should be able to run a 7-minute mile pace, INDEFINITELY, with no preparation." No. That's DUMB. If your leadership puts you in a situation where that is necessary, your leadership is DUMB too.
While I'm mostly inclined to agree with your higher-level point, I think this particular argument hurts more than it helps. Military leaders plan for unexpected situations in the ultimate adversarial environment. They don't mean to put people in this situation, but they plan for it anyway because they want troops to survive even when things don't go as intended. Being able to reach an objective on time is important, and being able to run away from trouble even more so. These are elite units, put into the highest-uncertainty kinds of situations. In that context, at that age, seven-minute miles for an hour or so is not at all unreasonable. It's not even that far from what I could do, despite being 56 and never having been any kind of physical elite. "Indefinitely" and under load might be pushing the idea too far, but the idea that there should be some minimum requirement is fundamentally sound. It's the repetition and the normalization of tactics unnecessarily requiring such high levels of physical prowess that creates problems.
Also biking is a bit easier on your back and legs. It may harm shoulders and testicles though.
...which means absolutely nothing in terms of either ability or fitness. Sure, if you're time constrained, biking might be feasible where running is not. Otherwise it's just Easy Mode.
2) OP was trying to go back into physical exercise, doing everything by bike is a great way to jump back. Running is amazing but your options are greatly reduced. I can use my bike to commute which means I don't have to allocate time for physical exercise. Aren't we all time constrained ?
have a good day
Not when you actually consider the probabilities of getting injured in a crash/fall.
I can't tell you the number of times I've been injured on two wheels. Once I was run over by an inattentive driver hitting my BMX, knocking me to the ground, driving over my leg. On other occasions I've broken my wrists, broken collarbone, countless instances of road rash and other wounds. Other people here are arguing you can cycle in snow and ice, lololol, been there, done that, have the scars to prove it.
There's just no comparison in the context of "easier on your body". You can run/walk on sidewalks and trails with all the other pedestrians, away from cars. Cycling near massive vehicles driven by people addicted to taking selfies is so hazardous to your body it tends to kill it to death.
If fitness is the goal, running is way more effective in the same unit of time than cycling. I've done both trail running and mountain biking on similar trails. Every time I get really into the trail running mode enough to have the necessary fitness to really execute, returning to my mountain bike feels like easy mode with heaps of unnecessary mechanical wankery thrown in mostly because it entertains my inner gearhead and gives me more things to play consumer whore shopping for and buying.
I wasn't even "comparing" bike / feet. Just showing the potential pain points. I just couldn't jog because of my knees while I could bike (it actually helped said knees). I do prefer running for overall health... it involves more muscle groups and your respiration is also more intense (and so far I never had biking high, while running puts me in the zone.)
Cheeers.
If you bike slowly around cars, bad shit is even more likely to happen.
Have you ridden a motorcycle on roads before? It's infinitely safer than pedaling a bicycle among automotive traffic because you can at least keep up with the flow of traffic and behave in every sense as an automobile, in what is firmly the automobile's native land.
In the US it's exceedingly rare to live in a village with dedicated bike trails you can safely coast along. We have roads full of carelessly driven cars everywhere. Riding bicycles on those roads is quite unpleasant to say the least, based on my experience. We have reported instances of assholes "rolling coal" not only deliberately smoking out cyclists, but in some cases flat out running them over.
And we haven't even broached the subject of cycling being an acquired skill many adults plain suck at. It's complicated if you didn't grow up pedaling everywhere. Have you ever tried introducing an adult to cycling who didn't do it before? The only teaching experience more cringe-worthy I can recall was teaching someone with no manual transmission experience how to ride a motorcycle. All those moments have been hellish "I'm pretty sure I'm just helping this person get on a path leading to more convoluted self-harm" experiences. Getting them to go for a run doesn't even register anywhere on this particular map.
Back when I moved to CA for my first startup job, I had to leave my partner and our pets back in IL for a few months with family while I found us an apartment. When my partner finally showed up she had her arm in a cast, wanna guess why? Bicycle crash. She didn't have much experience riding bicycles growing up in a sea of cycling-hostile 5+-lane Florida surface streets, and crashed riding my old bicycle with my nephew passing time while waiting to relocate. Imagine how annoying that must have been to bring two housecats through TSA alone with a newly broken arm. Yeah, go ride bicycles everywhere everyone!
People that recommend everyone ride a bicycle everywhere seem to have absolutely no perspective rooted in reality. My "man up, run everywhere" comment was intended mostly tongue in cheek, but I'm willing to play devil's advocate in arguing it's obviously safer and more accessible than cycling. They're both ridiculously impractical in a world optimized for automobiles.
Now you have a point if OP never rode a bike before, I'd stay away for a while. Maybe that's why I never had any issues going back to biking .. I basically grew up on a bike. But that's not out of touch with reality. I crashed twice in the last 6 months, but I was far from breaking an arm (even though both time it was a front wheel losing balance so face first to the ground) and that didn't bother me much more (and I have a super weak health these days, I'm not a young stud in mint condition at all)
about practicality, and even safety.. I'd argue it's not as sure as it appears, at least in western european countries.. it's less risky than heavy traffic intersection in a car with crazy drivers cutting you off (with my bike I can chose 20 different routes back to home), and unsurprisingly I get there faster than with my car (no traffic jams).