I have gotten into biking for considerable distances. It really gets you in shape and you get to see places you normally would not. I used to do about 20 miles in one afternoon, now I can do 30, 35 miles in only 3 hours. It only takes me two hours to reach the Hudson River from Ridgewood, which is pretty good considering the winding roads and brutal hills of the less-developed towns to the north and east of here. I prefer riding there as opposed to in the crime-ridden urban areas to the south and southeast of here. Ridgewood itself is kind of between the two, despite the 25,000 people, it still retains a suburban feel.

Much of this is training for the big bike trip to Massachusetts over the summer. I have changed the route from the city and Long Island. Now that I've seen the areas that I would have been traveling through [5 minutes of central Hackensack was enough] I've re-routed the trip to go through southern Connecticut. It's harder to plan due to the hilly terrain and big rivers, but it's a lot safer than going through Hackensack, Hoboken, Queens, etc.

Funny...there's practically no crime and industry here. However, as it usually is with at least medium-sized cities, the central part of the city is slightly less attractive.

This just lets me appreciate how pleasant my city is--it is suburban, yet there's low crime and such. Unfortunately, I don't get out and bike as much as I probably should.

If you go 10 minutes north or east of Ridgewood, you hit hick country. Go 10 minutes south and you hit a string of among the most dangerous cities in America. Then again, the Paterson-Hackensack-Jersey City-Newark stretch is one of the most densely populated places in North America, excluding the large cities like New York and Mexico City.

The only problem with biking on country roads is that they rarely have sidewalks and are often quite narrow. Then again, since a car goes by like once every 5 minutes, biking right on the road isn't too bad.

For some reason I can bike across the county in less than 2 hours, yet I cannot sprint a 400m run. It's funny how much endurance I have while biking and how much I don't have while running. :rolleyes:

My Boy Scout troop goes on extended bike trips all of the time. These trips are very easy where I live because the C&O canal trail goes through everything locally. We once had a trip to bike the entire C&O canal trail in a few days (all 184.5 miles), but I got sick on day 3 and only completed about 50% of the trail continuously. I've biked the entire trail in segments many times over, so many in fact that I feel I have a pretty good knowledge of where every part is located.

The largest single day trip I've done was maybe 70 miles in maybe 3 or 4 hours with lots of breaks. The new scouts can't keep up with our pace, so we typically have two groups and a few friends and I lead the front group. Funny thing was I thought 50 miles was hard about 4 years ago and then I did 70 without much trouble.

I use my bike often to get things in town as well, but when your town is very small, that's really nothing.

As for why you can bike well but not run a 400 well, I can easily explain that. Endurance and sprint endurance are different. I've heared my coach explain the technical stuff about how the ATP breaks down into lactic acid or something to that effect in the 400, but in short, endurance is different than sprint endurance. If you want to get better at the 400, do many things that get you tired quickly hard, such as 8 200s or 4 400s at good speed. Also, don't forget about the weight room, because power really can help you in the 400 as I've found.