Not that we need to cover this topic, but its always worth a refresher.  VO2 max is the maximum volume of oxygen that your body can consume during intense exercise.  High oxygen consumption is one of the key characteristics of great endurance runners, cyclists, rowers and cross-country skiers etc. 

The best runners have a VO2 max of 75 to 85 ml/kg...though compared to a thoroughbred horse with a VO2 of 150ml/kg we still have room to evolve.  Lance Armstrong reportedly has a VO2 of around 83ml/kg, while Lemond's was 93!  And if you think that's impressive, get ready to break out your xcountry skiis.  28 Year old Norwegian xcountry skier, Espen Harald Bjerke, holds one of the highest recorded VO2 in all sports at 97ml/kg!  If you'd like to read more about how Bjerke has optimized his training, this is a great read...it might surprise you on the approach he takes to intensity training (Article HERE).

So, where does this leave you and me?  Without dumping down some gas money on a lab to test your own VO2 (which there are many around here and we will explore in an upcoming blog), what are your options?  Well, as luck would have it there is a rather inexpensive test called, The Astrand 6 Minute Cycle Test.  With a proper indoor trainer, HR monitor and Stop Watch - you can come fairly close to determining what your estimated VO2 is.

In order to do the calculations and test, we've provided a link to the site.  Check it out and if you've done a professional lab testing, consider droping a note on the degree of accuracy.  Here's the LINK.

Remember, VO2 MAX is called MAX because its a defined ceiling.  Genetics play an important role in yours and although you can optimize against it through training, you cannot actually change the optimal value. 

An abstract on optimizing High Intensity-Integerval Training (HIT) and the effects on well trained endurance cyclists.  In summary, supramaximal HIT can significantly improve 40-km time trial performance, however proper mention of recovery needs to be made.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of three different high-intensity interval training (HIT) regimens on endurance performance in highly trained endurance athletes.

Methods: Before, and after 2 and 4 wk of training, 38 cyclists and triathletes (mean +/- SD; age = 25 +/- 6 yr; mass = 75 +/- 7 kg; [latin capital V with dot above]O2peak = 64.5 +/- 5.2 mL[middle dot]kg-1[middle dot]min-1) performed: 1) a progressive cycle test to measure peak oxygen consumption ([latin capital V with dot above]O2peak) and peak aerobic power output (PPO), 2) a time to exhaustion test (Tmax) at their [latin capital V with dot above]O2peak power output (Pmax), as well as 3) a 40-km time-trial (TT40). Subjects were matched and assigned to one of four training groups (G1, N = 8, 8 x 60% Tmax at Pmax, 1:2 work:recovery ratio; G2, N = 9, 8 x 60% Tmax at Pmax, recovery at 65% HRmax; G3, N = 10, 12 x 30 s at 175% PPO, 4.5-min recovery; GCON, N = 11). In addition to G1, G2, and G3 performing HIT twice per week, all athletes maintained their regular low-intensity training throughout the experimental period.

Results : All HIT groups improved TT40 performance (+4.4 to +5.8%) and PPO (+3.0 to +6.2%) significantly more than GCON (-0.9 to +1.1%;P < 0.05). Furthermore, G1 (+5.4%) and G2 (+8.1%) improved their [latin capital V with dot above]O2peak significantly more than GCON (+1.0%;P < 0.05).

Conclusion : The present study has shown that when HIT incorporates Pmax as the interval intensity and 60% of Tmax as the interval duration, already highly trained cyclists can significantly improve their 40-km time trial performance. Moreover, the present data confirm prior research, in that repeated supramaximal HIT can significantly improve 40-km time trial performance.

Its hard to imagine a better reason to have more than one form of latex below your waistline, but in this modern day and age it may do more for your stamina than you know. 

How does another 5-8 Watts sound to you?  With marginal victories in the low single percents, adding up to 5% improvement on a group ride could be a world a difference.  That's the potential of adding just 10$ latex inner tubes!

Ready to start your annual tithing for a new frame, set of aero rims or some other costly, speculative performance enhancement?  Before making that splurge, you've certainly heard of the 'power to weight' ratio, well its time to think in terms of  'cost to power'.  The easiest and least costly improvements often go overlooked to the buxom improvements of a new shiny frame or deep dish rim.  Well what about those whitewalls?

In this study, we are exposed to the rolling resistance over nearly all major road tires out there.  This should be given heavy consideration on a replacement next time you draw a flat.  Who knew that certain tires could produce such staggering differences in watts per wheel...in some cases, up to 10watts!

So check out the full study <HERE> and see where you're coming up 'short'.  It could mean the difference of many seconds, victories or simply aid in recovery from those Sunday battles through less output.

Note: I hope there weren't too many innuendos...I swear, they were unintentional until I reread.

We new some day that all of Tom's back and forth commuting on the bike would payoff.  Well the pay day has arrived.   Great article and nicely written by Ethan of Salem News:

By Ethan Forman
Staff writer
Thomas Mauceri of Swampscott has been cranking his way to work about four days a week from March through October since 1990.

However, the 54-year-old Swampscott resident is far from your casual bicycle commuter.

Using a sturdy Trek road bike built for speed, he battles traffic from his home in Swampscott to his job at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, where he works as a medical physicist in radiation oncology.

An avid rider who rides with two local bike clubs, he can push 17 to 18 mph on his way to work. The mileage, 40 miles a day, allows him to train and stay with the fast group on Sundays.

However, when gas prices ballooned to $4 a gallon, he noticed others biking to work, some of whom Mauceri noticed could use some advice.

Full Article: HERE

If you've been watching any of the Olympics this year, you've probably noticed many athletes (in particular Americans) sporting a new kind of tape all of their bodies.  Though amazing in its multifunctional use, it is not duct tape.  Rather, this is a simple yet impressive therapeutic rehabilitative taping system, developed 25 years ago called, Kinesio Tape. 

The first time I was introduced to this product was via my Chiropractor some 2+ years ago.  I was in an acute phase from a long ago, yet lingering, shoulder injury.  Skeptical at first, I was advised that this was used by many athletes, including one Lance Armstrong.  In further reading, much of its use was first acclaimed by the USPS Cycling Team during the 2001 Tour de France. 

That validation aside, I can attest to its rehabilitation effects and apparently its popularity has spread far and wide.  So whether its Misty May or any number of swimmers and sprinters you see during the Olympics, you're sure to see and hear more about this unique and strangely effective tape.

To read more about Kinesio Tape, check out the main website here:
http://kinesiotaping.com

Are Running Shoes the Fountain of Youth? By Lauren Cahoon
ScienceNOW Daily News
12 August 2008

Couch potatoes, your worst fears are true. Running slows the breakdown of our bodies as we age, according to a new study. Even people who run regularly for only a brief time can reap the benefits of the activity, drastically improving the quality of their golden years. Running provides myriad benefits, helping keep the pounds off and improving overall health. But is there a downside? When the jogging craze started in the 1970s, doctors became concerned that the sport could lead to injury and arthritis in older people. Physician and rheumatologist James Fries of the Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California, believed differently. He theorized that if people started performing vigorous exercise, like running, in middle age or later, they would increase the number of years they would remain in good health and minimize the number of years they would be disabled and unhealthy--a hypothesis Fries dubbed "the compression of morbidity."

To test the hypothesis, Fries and his team have, since 1984, kept tabs on more than 500 runners over the age of 50, comparing them with a similar group of nonrunners. Every year, the study participants answer questionnaires about their ability to perform life tasks such as walking and dressing. The scientists also tracked the volunteers' health and recorded the cause of death for any who perished.

As expected, the running group was leaner and healthier, and fewer of them died of heart problems, the team reports in the current issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine. However, the benefits of the jog-happy lifestyle went further. Nineteen years into the study, 34% of the nonrunning group had died, compared with only 15% of the running group. Only 7% of runners died from infections, neurological disease, or cancer, whereas 19% of nonrunners died of those causes. The researchers found that even individuals who ran regularly for just a month at some point in their lives gained from the activity--although the benefits weren’t as large as for regular runners. The biological mechanisms behind these effects remain unclear.

To rule out the possibility that healthier people are more likely to take up running, the researchers say they made sure the control group was similar in condition and lifestyle to the running group when the study began.

"The take-home message is that it is never too late to adopt running or vigorous exercise into a regular routine," says Eliza Chakravarty, the first author on the paper.

Kinesiologist Mark Tarnopolsky of McMaster University Medical Centre in Ontario, Canada, says that the study is good news for regular runners and casual ones alike: "It's interesting that someone can go out and train 25 years ago and still have those benefits work for you later."

Part II in the series on what makes better athletes.  This is a rather interesting twist to hand size.  No its not what you're thinking, although in a sense it does relate.  Check out the following article by Rita Rubin on a recent UK study.  Maybe you have more room to unlock and inner potential?

(Full Article HERE)

Palm readers may not be the only ones who can tell a lot about people by examining their hands.Recently, scientists in North America and Europe have looked to the relative lengths of index and ring fingers for clues about a variety of characteristics, including musical ability, athletic prowess and, in a study just released, osteoarthritis risk.

The researchers believe that the difference between the two fingers' lengths signifies the level of testosterone exposure in the womb. The longer the ring finger compared to the index finger, the thinking goes, the higher the exposure.

Scientists express the fingers' relative lengths as a ratio, computed by dividing index finger length by ring finger length. Men tend to have longer ring fingers than index fingers, or ratios less than 1, and women tend to have index and ring fingers of equal length, or ratios of 1.

Video HERE

Interesting Read:

The world-record pace for the marathon continues to improve for both men and women. For men, the record pace for the marathon is now about as fast as the record pace for the 10,000-meter run just after World War II. Today, champion athletes are running more than four times farther at speeds of well under five minutes per mile. How can this be? Are humans simply built better or is there something else behind the mind-blowing speeds on the racetrack?

Michael Joyner, M.D., an anesthesiologist at Mayo Clinic whose research interests extend to exercise science, says that a combination of factors are leading to new world records in track and field and other sports. He attributes the improved records, not necessarily to genetics, but to training harder and longer, improved medical care and the fact that people from throughout the world now participate.

In studying the world records of sporting events like the marathon, the mile and 10,000- and 5,000-meter races throughout the last 125 years, Dr. Joyner says there are key primary factors at play. Prior to World War I, athletes didn't train every day. They trained three to four times per week out of concern they would "overtrain" or become stale. By the 1920s, athletes were training more often and by the 1950s, especially in Eastern Europe, athletes were training daily for hours at a time.

By the 1960s, more people from other countries were involved in competition than ever before. Up until then, most champion athletes came from European countries, the U.S., Australia and Canada. Since then, however, athletes from the developing world have been able to participate. Since the 1960s, some of the most successful athletes have come from the East African countries of Ethiopia and Kenya.

"So we've gone from maybe one-fifth or one-sixth of the world's population participating to where we now have a huge pool of people in the Olympic Games," Dr. Joyner says.

Does this mean we've reached a plateau in terms of speed?

"At some level we've reached a physiological plateau. In general, the champions of today don't have dramatically better treadmill times as compared to elite athletes of earlier generations. What I think we are seeing is a small effect due to better racetracks, shoes and improved sports medicine. And, people are participating longer, so you have more competitive depth which leads to better races and races designed to set world records," Dr. Joyner says.

The Physiology of Performance

In endurance sports such as running a marathon, there are three physiological determinants of performance: maximal oxygen uptake (also called VO2 max), lactate threshold and running economy (sometimes called running efficiency).

Maximal oxygen uptake is the maximum capacity for oxygen consumption by the body during peak performance. It is also a measure of aerobic fitness. Generally, the higher the VO2 max during peak performance, the better the cardiac output - which means the heart is bigger.

In a treadmill test of two young men - one, an athlete, and the other, not - the athletic male generally has a VO2 max value of between 70 and 85 milliliters (ml) of oxygen per kilogram per minute, as compared to 45 in the sedentary male, Dr. Joyner says.

What fraction of your VO2 max you use over a period of time can depend on your lactate threshold, which is considered a marker of maximum steady-state performance for athletes in endurance events.

"The lactate threshold is highly related to how people perform in an event like the 10,000-meter race, marathons or a bicycle time trial. The physiology and biochemistry behind it is complex and controversial, but it's a good marker of when the regulatory and physiological control systems of the body are in balance," Dr. Joyner says.

Old Wives' Tales - The Lactate Threshold

Intense exercise causes lactic acid levels to build up faster than the body can metabolize it. For athletes, this can be good because in the process of generating lactic acid, energy for muscle is also being generated. However, Dr. Joyner says, there are some misperceptions about lactate levels. Specifically:

Lactate is not synonymous with muscle hypoxia: "The first misperception is that somehow people don't have enough oxygen when they are making lactic acid. That certainly can be true because lactic acid can come from a lack of oxygen, but under most circumstances the athletes have plenty of oxygen and there is plenty of oxygen in the muscle."
Lactate is gone from the muscle in the 15 to 30 minutes after exercise and does not make you sore: "The second misnomer is that lactic acid hangs around in your muscle for long periods of time. You may hear things like this individual is sore or not performing as well today because they have a lot of lactic acid in their muscle from yesterday's event. Well, you can have very high levels of lactic acid in muscle, but it's gone 15 to 30 minutes after exercise - so lactic acid doesn't hang around a long time."
Breathing oxygen on the sidelines does not help enhance lactate levels: "Breathing oxygen on the sidelines really doesn't help - there's no evidence that it works."
Running Economy

How well your muscles use oxygen and how well they can metabolize glucose without producing a lot of lactic acid in the skeletal muscle (which can contribute to fatigue) are both important for performance, Dr. Joyner says. However, how much speed you can generate at the lactate threshold is also important. This is known as running efficiency or running economy. Runners with good running economy, for example, can generate more speed per given oxygen uptake. The legendary Olympic champion Frank Shorter had outstanding running economy and this likely contributed to his success. Lance Armstrong also showed marked improvements in his efficiency when he returned to bicycle racing after beating cancer and that clearly helped him win the Tour de France seven times.

Most world-class athletes have a high VO2 max or, as Dr. Joyner says, "They all have big engines and high lactate thresholds because they've been training hard for a long time. Their muscles have adapted to run very fast without releasing a lot of lactic acid.

"In cycling for example, when Lance Armstrong came back from cancer, he became much more efficient - he could generate more power per given oxygen update. That is the same as a runner being able to generate more speed per given power. When you look at this small pool of elite athletes of runners, cyclists and rowers, all of them have a high VO2, all have a large engine and all of them have skeletal muscles that are designed not to produce a lot of lactic acid. So the question then becomes who is the most efficient," Dr. Joyner says.

The Aging Athlete

At 41 years old, nine-time Olympic medalist Darra Torres will be one of the oldest female Olympians at the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. It is not unheard of for a professional athlete to complete into his or her 40s, but it's unusual. Torres, a swimmer who specializes in sprints, depends more on muscle power and technique, not necessarily aerobic capacity.

Torres is not the first to compete into her 40s. Carlos Lopes was in his late 30s when he won the Olympic marathon in 1984. Jack Foster of New Zealand was in his 40s and he placed highly in the marathon in the 1972 and 1976 Olympic Games.

How can some athletes continue to compete into their late 30s and early 40s?

"Your VO2 max typically starts to decline in your 30s, but a highly trained athlete can delay that decline until they are in their later 30s or even early 40s. An average sedentary person loses about 10 percent per decade starting at about age 30, but for someone who is able to continue to train very hard into their 40s and 50s, they only lose about half that much - primarily due to the fact they continue to train hard," Dr. Joyner says.

The older athlete is redefining what normal aging is and what's possible for people who are middle age or older."

It's Cultural, Not Genetic

"Nobody becomes a great athlete without prolonged intense training," Dr. Joyner says. "As scientists search for genes and the determinants of performance, they keep drawing a blank. There have been no major gene discoveries saying that this gene really confers championship status or the potential for championship status of one person."

Sports are complex behaviors for biologists, he says. Many genes contribute to performance, but it isn't likely that one individual would have the right combination of all genes that would give you a natural competitive edge, he says.

"It can be very deceptive to say that since the Kenyans, and perhaps Ethiopians, are dominating distance running, it must be genetic. In fact there have been periods of time when other cultures have dominated distance running. Before World War II, the Finns dominated distance running. After World War II, the Eastern Europeans dominated distance running. They were just as dominant as the Kenyans are now," Dr. Joyner says.

Dr. Joyner points to cultural influences in sports. "I think what the Kenyans and Ethiopians have shown is the value of altitude training. They are physically active their entire lives, they live at high altitude, they run to and from school, they play soccer after school - all at high altitude (6,000 to 8,000 feet). There are not a lot of economic opportunities, so there is a tremendous incentive for people to run and train hard," he says.

"So what the Kenyans have added is altitude training, hard training and large numbers of highly motivated people, but their physiological data is not dramatically different from other people. I think you can make the same argument for the Eastern Europeans after World War II. If you were a pretty good athlete, the government offered you and your family incentives to train in an otherwise bleak economic landscape," Dr. Joyner says.

Doping

"One of the sad things in last 30 to 40 years of sport has been the emergence of the pharmacological arms race, or doping," Dr. Joyner says.

Creating reliable tests for these illegal compounds has been difficult. Several recent studies show that testing in humans for both steroids and erythropoietin (EPO), a hormone that induces red blood cell production, is very difficult. In testing for EPO, for example, a study suggests the tests are ineffective unless administered shortly after having taken EPO, because EPO doesn't have a long life in the body. But EPO's effects can last for months.

Another study suggests that it is very difficult to detect the use of some steroids through urine tests in some ethnic groups.

"Researchers have started to test the tests and have raised questions about the accuracy of the existing tests. They've shown that if you don't do the test soon after people take the drug, it may be very difficult to detect (especially if EPO is take in low doses)," Dr. Joyner says.

The Bottom Line: Keep Moving

"Remember, while it's fun to watch sports and while we will all be tempted to sit in front of the TV to watch the Olympics. The really important thing is to get out and move. One hundred and fifty minutes of physical activity a week is really the most powerful medicine anybody can prescribe. No matter what your level of fitness - even if it's just walking - try to be as physically active as you possibly can because that's the way to be a healthy old person and get more out of life," Dr. Joyner says.


Athletes, The Physiology Of Performance, And More. ScienceDaily. Retrieved August 5, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­/releases/2008/07/080731173157.htm

Who needs time away from the sedentary life, when you can sit longer, do less of anything and just let time pass you by...ahhh....

Researchers experiment with a chemical compound that they say can produce the benefits of aerobic activity without the work.  The drug appeared to change the physical composition of muscle, essentially transforming the tissue from sugar-burning fast-twitch fibers to fat-burning slow-twitch ones, the same change that occurs in distance runners and cyclists through training, according to research released Thursday.  Full article <HERE>

Much of this article only serves to validate what most of us already know, Cars and Cyclists don't make for good company.  Anyone willing to share their worst or most interesting car encounter?  Personally, its runs the gamut but having someone of the same sex roll their window down to reveal that they were pleasuring themselves for me, certainly ranks in the top category.  

Risking Life and Limb,
Riding a Bike to Work in L.A. Cyclists, Banned on Freeways and Reviled

Wall Street Journal Article:  By Drivers, Save a Buck and Make a Point By RHONDA L. RUNDLE
August 1, 2008; Page A1

LOS ANGELES -- Paula Rodriguez, who lives in the San Fernando Valley, got so disgusted with soaring fuel prices last spring that she stopped driving, sold her SUV and bought a bike.

But pedaling the 15 miles home from her job, the 30-year-old Ms. Rodriquez has encountered something more frightening than $4.50-a-gallon gasoline: the mean streets of L.A., home of the nation's most entrenched car culture.

"Drivers scream at me to get off the road," says the medical-billing clerk. The main commuting route near her home is so terrifying, she says, that she usually takes an alternative route that adds four miles to her trip.

Even then, it's not an easy ride. On one stretch, splintered glass in the street could puncture her tires, she says. On Wednesdays, she has to dodge garbage cans blocking the bike lane. On Friday evenings, as the sun sets, she feels menaced by drunk drivers. Such threats compel her to sometimes swing onto the sidewalk, even though that could get her a ticket. "I go slow, ring my little bell and stop sometimes to say 'hi' to pedestrians," she says.

Commuters across the U.S. are responding to high gasoline prices by finding alternatives to driving. But in Los Angeles, it takes a special kind of road warrior to hop on a bike in the name of saving the planet and a little money.

The city is notoriously short on bike lanes, bike paths and bike racks. Bicycles are illegal on the freeways, and city streets are packed with motorists who seem increasingly cranky about the swelling ranks of cyclists. Every cyclist seems to know somebody who has been injured or who has survived a near-death experience. In 2006, 28 people in Los Angeles County were killed on bikes, according to the California Office of Traffic Safety. Geography makes things difficult, too, as the distance from home to work in this sprawling metropolis can be immense and necessitate adding public transportation to the journey.

Tensions between cyclists and motorists here have become dangerously combative. Los Angeles police are investigating an apparent July 4 road-rage incident that sent two cyclists to the hospital with serious injuries. The cyclists crashed into a car after its driver allegedly slammed on his brakes in front of them on Mandeville Canyon Road, a winding street through a hilly neighborhood.

"Cyclists have equal rights, but in fact a lot of motorists think they should get off the road," says Lynne Goldsmith, manager of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority's bike program. Nearly everyone has a bike sitting in the garage, but people are starting to actually use their bicycles for transportation, ranging from short hops to the market to long-distance commuting, she says. "When we're used to seeing more cyclists, we will treat them better."

An Exercise in Frustration

For now, commuting by bike here is most often an exercise in frustration. Michelle Weinstein's 75-minute commute to work begins at 6:50 a.m., when she dodges rush-hour traffic on a busy boulevard in the city's Silver Lake neighborhood on her way to a subway station. She hauls the bike onto the train, then takes it off in North Hollywood, about seven miles to the north.

The next leg is an express-bus ride. But when the bus pulls up with a full bike rack, she must wait for the next bus. When she finally arrives in Van Nuys, she gets off the bus and back on the bike for a game of chicken with motorists.

"It's nerve-rackingly crowded, and people give me dirty looks," says Ms. Weinstein, a 33-year-old personal assistant at a music-production company. "Everyone I know who has biked has met with some kind of injury," Ms. Weinstein says.

Ms. Goldsmith says the city has 1,200 miles of bikeways, but many of those are along busy thoroughfares on which cars and bikes compete for space. In West Hollywood, an enclave of 40,000 residents, debate is raging over the proper role of sidewalks. The issue has divided elderly pedestrians; environmentalists who ride bikes to work; and parents who worry about the safety of their children, whether in baby carriages or on bicycles.

Defensive Biking

Biking advocates are offering classes to teach novices how to be defensive riders. "Our classes are starting to sell out quickly," says Liz Elliott, a founder of the grass-roots organization Cyclists Inciting Change Thru Live Exchange. She says the group has so far instructed about 100 people. Many bike lanes are "too narrow and you don't want to be hugging the door zone," she advises -- referring to the space in which a parked car can swing its door open suddenly. Unfortunately, much of the local bike infrastructure was designed by engineers who don't ride bikes, she says.

Veteran riders say that obnoxious motorists are the biggest problem. Michael Marckx, a 44-year-old vice president of Globe International Ltd., a skateboard company in El Segundo, recently started commuting three or four days a week by bike, encountering what he calls "caffeine-infused psychotics" in their cars who yell at him to get off the road. "There's something about being in the car that is kind of anonymous. It's a veil to hide behind, and people seem to like to get their aggression out on cyclists," says the former professional bike racer.

Some cyclists are striking back. Stephen Box, a cycling activist who claims to have broken the Mandeville Canyon story on his blog, carries a camera and snaps pictures of bike-tripping potholes and confusing traffic signs. He sends the snapshots to the city. The community organizer says he and about a dozen bloggers drafted a Cyclists Bill of Rights in January that he is presenting for a vote at neighborhood council meetings around the region. But Lenore Solis, a council member in Atwater Village, says she voted against it because the assertion of a right to "full access" on "all mass transit with no limitations" is too broad, and could be interpreted as a legal right to bike lanes on freeways.

Indeed, the freeways have been invaded repeatedly by renegade cyclists calling themselves Crimanimal Mass, an offshoot of Critical Mass, a national cycling enthusiasts' group. About 30 cyclists performed the illegal stunt in rush-hour traffic on a recent Friday to demonstrate how much faster commuters can zip through gridlock on a bicycle than in a car stuck in traffic.

Despite the problems, L.A. cyclists keep trying. Kim Jensen Marren broke her ankle when she collided with a truck that pulled in front of her bicycle five years ago. But now the 30-year-old graphic designer is newly married and wants to save money to open her own wedding-productions business. So she recently got back on her bike and started riding to work again, figuring that she is saving about $220 a month