A recent experience on my stationary bike

I struggle getting between 30 and 40 minutes a day seven days a week on the stationary bike. Even though I was able to read a lot of books during this time, it still is boring, boring, boring. However, I’m able to keep my blood pressure in check and my pulse rate is in the mid-fifties. So, I keep at it.

However, within the last week or even a couple of weeks before that riding was not fun, and I’ll tell you why. When I first started feeling this dull ache in the sitting bones, as the bike riders call them, I figured it was just a fluke and just blew it off, but it continued to hurt more each morning.

Contrary to what I always tell my trainees, if it doesn’t feel right, stop and we’ll adjust. I didn’t listen to my advice in this case.

A little back story here. In May I had cataract surgery. What an amazing difference that’s made. However, the doctor did not want me to ride the bike because moving my head from side to side was not good. I told him that when I ride on the stationary bike, I don’t move my head from side to side because I’m looking at a book.

He kind of hesitated and I knew at once that I was not going to be riding that bike until he told me it would be ok to do so. After he did say it would be ok to start riding again many, many things popped up in my life.

Thus, I got very little time on the bike. When I started getting serious on it again, starting to build my time out to 30 and 40 minutes each day at about 4:30 in the morning I started feeling this dull ache around the 30–40-minute mark.

I continued riding until one day, I was walking out of the garage and suddenly, I had this pain that I’ve never ever felt in my entire life. I thought I was going to throw up just getting into the house. Fortunately, my wife of forty-plus years was home. She didn’t know what it was, but she knew I was hurting.

After one full day of laying in the bed on cold, hot, cold, hot, cold pads and compresses along with stretching, it finally got to where I could get up and walk around. It was still sore for the next two or three days. On the next day, I realized that the pain had originated while I was riding the bike.

So, I stayed off the bike.
After a week. I got back on the bike again and within two minutes I knew that it was a mistake, so it got right off.

I gave it another four days and then went to the bicycle shop where I bought another seat. I had to cut the seat from the stationary bike stem and then adapt the new seat to the post.

After paying close to $60.00 for this seat, which incidentally is a nice seat, I put it on, adjusted it and I was on the bike for maybe 10 minutes before I could feel that ache coming back. I immediately got off the bike put the seat back in the packaging and dropped it off at the bicycle shop. I’m going to give it another couple of weeks before getting a different seat, getting back on the bike, and catching up with my time.

I bought this seat from the Bicycle Butler in Spokane, WA. And I cannot say enough good things about this store.

So, the long and short of this is to pay attention to your body. If it hurts, stop doing it. Make some adjustments. And do something else while it heals up. If I had done that, I wouldn’t have been in a position right now of not riding that bike. And I don’t like it, but it will get better.

I also am going to add the fact that if I had listened to my wife numerous times, she told me something, during our 43 years of marriage, my life would have been easier. There are a lot of different things I wouldn’t have had to go through, the biggest of which is PTSD. She told me about 20 years into my law enforcement career that I needed to be seeing somebody.

As a mental health therapist, she knew what she was talking about. But as my wife, as many of you guys know, I didn’t listen to her. I sure wish I had. But I didn’t, and I’m paying for it now. So, if any of you guys or you women are in this position, hook up with the VA if you are a veteran.

Now, I’m not exactly certain why I got so far off the track on the bicycle aerobics and paying attention to my body. But it did. So, take it for what it is my experience, good or bad may help you.