I'll start of my short series of articles on thoughts I had on my 150km recumbent ride with a no-brainer. At least it seems to be quite obvious that, if you climb a hill, you will descend the hill at some point. This becomes very obvious riding a recumbent. An upright bike allows the rider to shift the weight and a lot of force can be put into the cranks by simply using ones weight. A recumbent rider on the other hand has only one way to put force into the cranks: pedaling. Where hills can easily be climbed using upright bikes with a limited gear range (such as 3 speeds or single-speeds), on a recumbent bike a nice range of gears is necessary. Fine adjustments have to be made to always keep the gear optimal gear. Climbing hills is quite a struggle on recumbents compared to upright bikes. Once the top is reached, the bike becomes a different vehicle. Speed is reached very fast and recumbents feel like flying and airplane. The lower point of weight and the different aerodynamics really pay off. Frankly speaking: it's a blast.

This experience translates very well to my work as a researcher in life sciences. A lot of work is invested in getting protocols to work reliably, pursuing experiments and ensuring results obtained are the proper ones. This takes ample time and is a quite frustrating process most of the time. It's struggling uphill. However once the protocols are stable enough and results start pouring in, more enjoyable parts of the work begin. Such as being able to judge ones own hypothesis and discuss it with fellow researchers. Maybe even getting a paper published. These phases often feel more like flying than actually doing work. The energy you invested in the last weeks just push you through it.

Seeing such a simple concept applying to so different areas in life is an amazing experience. Next time I struggle uphill somewhere, I'll try to remember it's worth the flight downhill.