Another post in my small series of concepts I understood while riding my recumbent. This one is simple as well, though too often we don't apply it ourselves.

To those who haven't done it: Riding a recumbent is different from riding an upright bike. You have to learn riding again. So before I bought my recumbent, I went to the Azub shop and test rode one. They showed me how to ride it. One month later I went to pick up my bike. I didn't train for a 150km ride, which some of the people I told my plan to thought of crazy. And the beginning was hard. It's a new way of riding and you have to get used to the positioning and the fact that you can't use your bodys weight pedaling. So I noticed something I never had noticed on my other bike: Muscular warm up. I still notice it when I ride my recumbent. It takes about 30-45 minutes for my muscles to fully warm up. During that period you slowly increase the force your muscles can produce. Thus after riding for about 1-2 hours, riding starts to feel much better. Indeed I finished riding after 8 hours in a higher gear than I started.

This is analogous to many things in life. To improve you have to start, and when you're at it you will get better. Last week I met a friend of mine She's at the end of her university education. She already works in several jobs for the last year instead of writing her masters thesis. While we talked she mentioned that she never had thought she could do so many practical things. But having to do them, she could.

I believe most of the time when we are put to something new, something that pushes our borders, we adapt and we can do it. The only thing that keeps us back is our fear of failure. Our lizard brain (as Seth Godin describes it in Linchpin). So dump fear, start doing.