Back on the Bike

Michael W. Arnold — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 08:50:48 -0500

It’s been a month to the day since my last health and fitness update. In January, I was pretty settled in my routine and didn’t see any changes coming. I walked at my desk. I lifted in my home office at some point between meetings during the day. I ate what was in the house. That’s it. Easy and settled.

But, May brought an exciting unsettlement that significantly changed my routine in a way I would never have imagined in January.

As I’m sure I’ve wrote about many times, when I first got healthy in my 20s, it was a combination of a strict paleo diet and cardio. At first, it was nightly hour-long eliptical sessions in the apartment gym. But, I really hit my stride when I moved to my current house in East Nashville and discovered cycling. I’d never been a fitness or sports guy. But, something about cycling clicked for me. It was fun. It was exciting. It didn’t hurt my knees. It got me outside. And, it wasn’t hot. I loved cycling the greenways. At my peak, I was doing 40 to 50 miles per week and loving it.

But… I moved to Donelson after I got married so our house to could be remodeled. We moved back right as we had Rosemary. Then Oliver. Then Virginia. Life happened. I got busy. By January of this year, I was lucky if I rode my bike two or three times a year. It made me sad. It was always a goal to get back into cycling because I loved it so much. It just never seemed to happen.

Then, I got a very exciting message on LinkedIn in May. A startup with an office downtown wanted me to be their staff data engineer. I’d make more money. Leave management behind to be an individual contributor again. And — most excitingly — be in cycling distance to my house. Leaving the saftey of my home exercise routine was scary. I was worried I’d “fall off the wagon” and undo all the great progress I’d made. But, the idea of cycling to work, the idea of getting back into it, was just too hard to ignore. And, working from home was making me depressed. I missed dressing up for work. I was tired of videos and wanted to see real people. Despite my reservations, I took the jump and accepted the job.

Weekly Cycling Miles

I’ve now been working downtown and commuting by bike for over a month. It’s been great for me. Exercise isn’t even something I have to think about anymore. My daily trips up and down the steep bridge over the river and up Demonbreun Hill have already increased my fitness.¹ I’m comfortable on my bike again. Even after just six weeks, I’m easily able to make it up the many hills of Nashville without issue. Freed from my office and the treadmill, I have the motiviation to cycle on the weekends, too.

Weekly Average Daily Steps

Since I don’t even have to plan or think about cardio, I’ve left tracking more or less behind. My phone is always sitting on my desk. I don’t wear a smart watch. In Apple Health, my step count has gone down to almost zero.² Heck, just before this offer came in I started tracking my activity here. I’m dropping the step metric alltogether now as it does nothing for me.

My new cardio goal is simple. At least five times a week I either have to bike to work (easy) or I need to do 6,500 steps on my new treadmill with a 5% incline.³ An additional, unspoken, rule is that since my work route is 6 miles with some pretty signifigant hills, I can also do the 11 mile Shelby Bottoms Greenway loop as a equivalent. So, I’m still using my “treadmill” tracker in Streaks, but I’ve changed the meaning a bit. Even with the change, my streak is unbroken. I’m presently 72 weeks straight of doing my old 10k steps five days or a week or the new bike/6,500 steps five days a week plan.

My lifting routine has changed a bit, too. Instead of it being integrated randomly into my work day, I do it early in the morning before work. This was the bit that worried me the most. I’d made significant strength gains since July 2025 and I was worried I wouldn’t be able to maintain the morning lifts. But, Jennifer decided to start lifting with me. Now, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 6a Jennifer and I do our weights together in the livingroom. Like my cardio, my streak in Streaks remains unbroken. I’m week at 48 of lifting at least twice a week with a near 90% sucess rate of lifting thrice-weekly since November 2025.

Dumbbell Weight Progression

The only downside to lifting early in the morning, is that my ride to work has the steepest incline. It’s rought to do squats and then follow it 45 minutes later with a 20-minute bike ride that’s mostly up hill. But, still, it’s so nice to not have to track anything or work in 2 hours to get my steps. And, again, my fitness is improving. The rides are becoming easier and easier. And, just last weekend, I did a caual ride up and down hill around the neighborhood to go to our favorite brewery and the grocery store. It was nice to have the fitness to casually do that.

A New Fitness Life

Now that I cycle my commute, I just go to work and come home and hardly think about exercise at all. Only a few times has there been so much rain that I couldn’t find a window to bike in. On those days, I just did some walking on the treadmill at night and made the rest up with a nice long (and relaxing) ride on the weekend.

So, that’s my update. I continue to lose weight (I just reached a normal BMI for the first time in ages). I continue to get stronger (most recently bumping up to lifting 26.25 lbs). At the current trajectory I’m following I’ll finally reach an equilibrium weight sometime this fall. Sometime here in the next year, I’ll stop progressing on weights. I’ll officially, totally, and completely be in a “just live” maintenance mode.

I’ve yet to diet. I’ve yet to buy equipment other than two dumbbells with interchangable plates. I’ve got a simple treadmill and a boring commuter bike. That’s it. No gym membership. No trackers. No expenses. I’m just living my life. That’s true health.

The ride to work has 160ft of climb and the ride home has 136ft of climb. Two pretty steep hills on both ends of the route. ↩︎
I did wear a tracker one day, just out of curiousity. It turns out I get around 4k steps during the day at the office and another 1-2k when I get home. Not to mention the 3-4k I’ll get on some days when I go on a walk with Jennifer and George. ↩︎
Naturally, like a week before I got the new job my old treadmill broke. I got a new treadmill with a fixed 5% incline. Per my math, at 5% I can do 6500k steps instead of 10k at 0% with the same benefit. ↩︎

Cycling on Marmanold.com

Back on the Bike

A New Fitness Life