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Hit 500 miles on my gravel bike this month and I'm not impressed
I pushed myself to ride 500 miles in September because a buddy said it would change my fitness completely. All I got was sore knees and a bigger appetite for pizza. Is hitting big numbers really worth it for average riders like me or is it just bragging rights?
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robinson.paul6d ago
Hold up, are you actually trying to argue that doing something hard and not seeing immediate results is pointless? Look man, 500 miles is no joke and sure, your knees hurt and you ate more pizza, but maybe the point was never about fitness changing overnight. I mean, when I started trying to do longer rides last year, my times were awful and I felt like garbage, but after a few months I could climb hills without dying and I wasn't out of breath carrying groceries. Sounds like you're just mad because you expected a magic pill instead of putting in the boring, consistent work that actually builds endurance over time. Plenty of people brag about hitting 500 just to post on Instagram, but the real win is that you proved to yourself you can do it even when it sucked, which is way more valuable than any fitness tracker data.
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xena_jackson5d ago
Robinson, you just reminded me of this time I tried to learn guitar when I was like 22. Bought a cheap acoustic, watched YouTube videos, and my fingers hurt like hell for weeks. I couldn't even play a G chord without it sounding like a dying cat. Everyone else online was posting covers of songs they learned in a month and I was over here still struggling with basic strumming patterns. But then one day, maybe three months in, I was just messing around and suddenly I could switch chords without pausing. My timing got better, my fingers stopped bleeding, and I could actually play along with a song. It was the most boring, frustrating grind ever, but that feeling when you finally get it is worth way more than any quick win. Your 500 miles thing sounds exactly like that, you just had to get through the suck to find the payoff.
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