I am a cyclist and a new father twice. How do I carry it? I'm already thinking about the next bike routes I'll do with my kids!
I write these lines while holding a baby just days old asleep on my lap... and his newborn brother seems to be watching me from the nearby couch. Yes, indeed, I have been a father and twice. Two twins, healthy, handsome (yes, okay, I drool over them...) and desired ones who have arrived to give a 360 degree turn to our lives.
A radical 'change of pace' that, even though it was expected, is still difficult to assimilate. Like the fact that The bicycle has come to occupy a second (or third, or fourth...) plane in my existence... at least temporarily.
Friends and experienced cyclist parents around me already warned me, always with a certain sarcasm and humor, during the months before the birth, with expressions like “Forget about the bike for at least a year”; “Take advantage of pedaling now because your bargain will soon run out”; “Throw away the bottles and buy bottles” and other pearls of this style. Nothing like friendships to encourage you in these cases, right?
But I don't resign myself to leaving the two wheels and, like everything in life, I like to always see the glass half full. Because, although it is true that these first weeks are a logical adaptation to the dwarves, I think that sooner than expected I will be able to get back on the skinny bike again, even if it is just for a ride of just two hours... which is already a lot! Call me deluded... but I don't see it as complicated: knowing more or less the meal and sleeping schedules of Marcos and Lucas, their moments of tantrums throughout the day, and organizing myself with their mother... I glimpse a horizon of brief weekly outings with the bike, at least to take off my overalls, at the same time that his mother will be able to enjoy some time running or in the gym as she did until shortly before giving birth. If we manage to recover that area of physical activity for each one of us, it will be like winning the red points jersey of the Tour.
Another thing is long runs or assistance at marches. cycle tourists, who will surely have to wait a few more months (especially for the fact of recovering the shape I never had...), as well as the possibility of going out cycling, father and mother together, just as we did before we were one. But the mere fact of thinking about the moment when we can take the twins with us, each one in their chair, in a little less than a year, or that moment when we buy them their first bicycle and teach them to ride, erases a stroke of a pen my anxiety about going out to train almost daily as I did before, keeping the bike clean every week, or devouring all the specialized magazines that fall into my hands. It's simple, now the priorities are different... and they barely lift an inch from the cradle.
The bicycle will always be there, and both his mother and I We will try to instill in Marcos and Lucas the passion that we feel for this sport, for us the most beautiful in the world. If we achieve it, we will surely enjoy great moments pedaling as a family that we will never forget. This is what my father did for me, and I will be eternally grateful to him.
Author: Víctor Marcos, Communication and RRSS Bikefriendly
