The pandemic has opened many people’s eyes to the benefits of running or cycling to work.active commuting” – and some continue the habit.
Commuters are no longer satisfied with long drives or boring train rides and are looking for ways to make their journeys more productive and enjoyable.
6 people tell us how they make the most of their commute time.
“You don’t walk the same road two days in a row.”
William McDonald, 51, is focused on changing his commute time. The web developer from Scotland, who has lived in Sweden for his 17 years, keeps his trips to his Stockholm office fresh by “never using the same method or route two days in a row.”
Whether it’s biking before a boat ride, running, or swimming along the way, switching travel to work helps McDonald feel like she’s getting the most out of her day. . “In the summer, I sometimes ride my bike and swim in a heated pool on my way to work. I bike year-round, unless there’s a big snowdrift,” he says.
“I just do it for a little bit of variety. It can be a little depressing sometimes to get on the same train every morning and see the same people. It’s like having some sort of adventure or a different focus for the day. It can add character to the day. Otherwise, commuting is just a small step to getting through the day at the office.”
Due to his job, McDonald sometimes works from home, but on those days he often goes mountain biking in the nearby forest. “Sometimes I go cross-country skiing during my lunch break!”
“Inline skating is a full-body exercise.”
In New York, Miguel Ramirez, 35, a personal trainer and inline skating instructor, has been skating on the city’s streets for the past 12 years.
“Inline skating is a full-body workout. It also requires a lot of balance, coordination, and flexibility. It’s great for short to medium distances. Hybrid commuting is also super easy. You can easily hop on a train or bus,” he says. say.
Ramirez says skating is a more viable option than you might think. He says, “There are many places where you can go indoors for inline skating, which makes errands like grocery shopping and deli shopping much faster.”
However, he doesn’t recommend that anyone commute in skates. “It doesn’t have mechanical brakes like a bicycle, so you have to be closer to intermediate level. But it’s manageable.”
So far, he has avoided conflict. “When I skate, I’m pretty defensive. I’m always looking out. I think people are going to run over me, so I keep my distance.”
“We commuted to sew, knit, and needlepoint.”
Before retiring in 2020, Angela, 58, spent her commute to her engineering job working on craft projects with colleagues.
It started one day when her colleague boarded the train with a crochet project. “That’s when I started sewing, knitting and needlepoint commuting,” said Angela, who lives in Belgium. They continued that for eight years until her co-workers were retrained and Angela quickly retired.
“The highlight of our days was making things on the train. We would often have a good laugh. People would come up and join us and chat. The commute was… It was really fun. Before that, I was just reading reports on my way to work, but it wasn’t that fun.
“Once, when she was making curtains, she would drag them on the train and hand sew them one by one. Another time, she changed into a half-baked dress in the train bathroom, so I couldn’t pin it up. This adventure has made us both look forward to commuting.”
The two have kept in touch since they quit their jobs. “We just met on the train, but we really became friends. The climax of our creation, the big climax, was making her wedding dress together, not on the train.”
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“I’ve been practicing Italian for about an hour and a half.”
Kevin Donnelly, 40, a geneticist from Edinburgh, uses his daily walks to hone his Italian skills and can be heard repeating key phrases from language learning audiobooks.
“It’s amazing,” he says. “People just think I’m on the phone. I pretend to chat in Italian as I push through the crowd. Of course, any Italian notices that I repeatedly ask for directions to the station. Probably.
“Cycling in Edinburgh can be a literally painful experience at times. Walking clears my head and makes me feel good.
“I practice for about an hour and a half, otherwise there’s no way I’ll get it. In just over a month, I can now speak more French than I ostensibly studied for four years in school.”
“Much more efficient than a road bike”
In 2015, Heinrich Neumann from Nordhorn, Germany, ditched his electric bike in favor of a velomobile. The 63-year-old has since cycled 38 kilometers (24 miles) to the hospital where he works as a doctor.
“Just with my power and this aerodynamic fairing, I’m so much more efficient than a road bike. It’s unbelievable.” Neumann once drove to work because he was late, but it took even more time. It took.
What do his colleagues think about velomobiles? “It’s mixed. I’m a little jealous because they don’t have the same fitness training as me. But I haven’t been able to convince my colleagues. [to do it].
“It’s a lot of fun. It has optimal weather protection, unless the road is completely covered in ice or snow. And even if you do crash, there’s structure around it that absorbs a lot of the impact.”
“Audiobooks helped relieve my stress.”
Seventy-year-old Roberta Jones discovered years ago that listening to books made her commute more enjoyable. She has listened to about 1,000 audiobooks, starting with cassette tapes, then CDs, and then moving to her Audible in 2005.
“I’ve listened to almost 1,000 audio books that I never would have read if I didn’t have the time,” says Jones, a self-employed consultant in Sacramento, California. “I flew to other planets, expanded my consciousness, learned a lot, and explored the classics. All while driving to and from work.”
Although she is currently working from home, she continues her daily routine of listening to audiobooks. It helped her de-stress in the car, she remembers. ”
Her commute has varied over the years, but has always taken more than an hour. She said: “Originally, her commute was very demanding and she didn’t have to pay attention to anything other than the traffic around her. [Audiobooks] It relieved a lot of my stress and was very interesting and informative. It was a win-win. ”
