Yesterday we were enjoying the temporary spring weather during the day. I cleaned the porch and picked up the winter debris in the yard. Claire pulled out her bike and spent an hour or so riding until the rain got so bad that she couldn't keep going. After a full four or five months of not riding her bike and still being fairly new to it even at that point, I was worried she would have difficulties getting into the swing of it again, but I was wrong. That's how bike riding is. Kind of like swimming. You can stop doing it for years and years and pick it back up again in about three seconds.
So why isn't that true of roller skating? I used to roller skate all the time in late grade school and through middle school. There was a time when I'd go once a week and I could skate backwards and do that crossover thing with your feet to go around corners and link arms with friends and all skate in a row. Yesterday with the Brownies it took a full half hour to feel comfortable on the skates again, and it wasn't until the very end of the session that I was sure enough on my feet to increase my speed a bit. I've had the same experience ice skating in recent years, only worse because I never did it much to begin with. I wonder if it's just a center of gravity thing? The skates stay the same size no matter how tall you get, but the bike grows with you. And maybe swimming would be easier as you grow--more surface area for the water to support!
In any event, I'm not sure how much actual exercise I got yesterday. It WAS an hour and a half of skating, and we were out there most of the time, but going so slowly for most of that time that it wasn't hard work. But it wasn't anything like running three miles. To make up for it, I walked the dog when we got home. This makes two weeks in a row of exercising six days straight.
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