The daily bicyle commute

A few months ago I decided to discontinue my work subsidized bus pass and rely on bicycle and running as my primary means of commuting to work. My place of work is only about 6-1/2 miles from where I live so the commute is short, and the majority of the commute isn’t in traffic, but rather along the Burke-Gilman trail. Besides, it takes longer to get to work by bus or car than it does to get there by bike.

The best part of commuting to work by bicycle is the other cyclists. Seattle is definitely a city of bicycle commuters, and one of the primary routes for commuters is the Burke-Gilman trail. So the daily commute along the Burke-Gilman trail is always an adventure. There are the cyclists who slowly plod along, as well as those who see their commute as their personal daily crit. As for me, I fall somewhere in between. I do tend to see my commute as a bit of a personal time trial (anything under 25 minutes is good), but I have my own rules for my ride:

• I do actually stop at stop lights.
• I keep my place at stop lights and don’t jockey for a better position in front of the other cyclists who were waiting before me. This might get me stuck behind some slower cyclists, but I can pass them later.
• I don’t draft other cyclists during the commute (I might pace them, but there’s a good distance between us).
• I don’t pass other cyclists then immediately slow my pace (that drives me crazy).
• I don’t pass other cyclists unless it’s safe to do so (e.g. I’m not passing a cyclist with oncoming cyclists two abreast).

My commute can be interesting when I stick to these rules and try and beat my previous PR for getting home or getting to work. However, being a strict rule follower can lead to road rage and I do tend to get annoyed when others aren’t following the same set of rules. But I try and use that just to make the ride even more interesting; I might suddenly have someone I must catch and pass who is now way ahead of me because they flew through a traffic light while I was stopped.

Today I decided I would just take it easy and enjoy the ride in (I tend to tell myself that a lot, but rarely follow it). My ride started off with all of the lights in my favor as I ride down a mile of NW 24th Ave in Ballard, a hill long hill steep enough to easily keep pace with the cars. As soon as I got on to the Burke-Gilman trail, I knew the ride was going to be a bit more interesting. Everyone seemed to be moving at a pretty good pace, no slow riders. The pace was plenty fast enough so I just stuck ten or so feet behind the first person I came up behind. As I followed I was passed and then the person in front of me got passed by a faster cyclist. The person in front of me clearly frustrated that someone dared to pass them during their commute quickly picked up the pace, and passed the person that just passed them. I kept up with the pace behind the two cyclists following behind just close enough to see how it would end. In the end their were no violent acts of bicycle road rage, one of the riders turned off of the trail and headed in a different direction. However it was enough to keep todays commute interesting and get me to work a bit faster than what I had initially planned on; the daily Burke-Gilman bicycle commute is rarely dull.

My 1000 Mile Commute Winds Down

This year I didn’t even pull out my bike out until February 12. However, back on February 19 I decided to challenge myself to travelling 1000 miles of my commute in 2009 by bicycle. My commute is roughly 12-1/2 miles round trip; so to commute 1000 miles by bike I needed 80 round trips. To keep track of the days, I recorded every day I biked here (6.25 miles for a one way only trip, 12.5 miles for a round trip).

Flash forward 8-1/2 months later and November is approaching, the year is starting to wind down, and I am within 3 days of complete my goal. I added up the days left for me to commute by bike, taking into account holidays and planned days off, and figured out I have 37 days in which I can commute by bike, so pulling off 3 days shouldn't be too difficult.

Though out the year of commuting I had setbacks; weeks I just didn’t get on my bike. However there were also weeks where I biked regardless of the conditions; I actually commuted by bike on the hottest day in Seattle history, or today which was probably the coldest and wettest ride in this year. I even videoed my commute for posterity. Regardless of how hot or wet it got, my bike ride was rarely more than 40 minutes long, which was usually quicker than taking the bus to work. I admit that in the larger scheme of things biking 12-1/2 miles to and from work is no big deal. Yet when its all said it done, it will feel kind of cool to say “I commuted 1000 miles by bike in 2009”.

Maybe in 2010 I should try for 2000...

My 1000 Mile Commute in 2009

I’ve always been a bit of a fair-weather bike commuter, but with each successive job I’ve had over the past 12 years (there has been 4 of them), I’ve moved a little closer to home. With each new job, I’ve added a few more days of commuting by bike. At my current job at the University of Washington, the route I take when I commute by bicycle is just over 13 miles round trip (a little more according to Google Maps, a little more still according to my bikes odometer).

As a fair weather biker my bike usually doesn’t get pulled out until late May and gets put away in early October. During a normal year I will commute to work by bike a couple days here, a couple days there. Eventually I find a good book to read and start taking the bus so I can read my book, and my bike gets put away. However, this year will be different; I have set a goal of using my bike to commute 1000 miles in 2009. That’s roughly 80 days of round trip commuting by bike if I take my usual route. There are 261 work days in 2009. However, if I exclude most of January, and half of February (I started on February 12), exclude planned vacation days (2009 is already totally planned out) and only count work days based on my alternative work schedule (9-9s, or 9 hour days with every other Friday off), I am left 191 days to complete my task. So I will need to bike a bit less than half of my scheduled work days in 2009.

The rules are I have set for myself are as follows: Regardless of the route I take I can only count a maximum of 13 miles round trip (6.5 miles each way). If I put my bike on the bus for any part of a trip in either direction, that half of the commute does not count. I can only count miles biked in the commute to and from work (no going on a long bike ride on the weekend and counting that). I have to publicly post how I am doing here.

So to most bike commuters, this is nothing (the guy I share an office with bikes every day that there isn’t snow on the ground), but for a fair-weather cyclist like myself with a delicate posterior this is a bit of an undertaking.

To the non-bike commuter who asks “why bother?” Sadly the reason is cycling and skiing is the only real exercise I get. I really don’t have time to go to the gym on a regular basis, and wouldn’t go even if I did have time (don’t really like gyms). I need to get some kind of exercise and taking care of it during my commute seems like the easiest way.

EDIT: I fully admit that biking 6.5 miles at a time can hardly be considered "exercise", but I gotta start somewhere.