Flat tarmac, GP5000s, no wind or a tail breeze and it feels like you can go forever. I love grabbing a wheel and switching in with someone of a similar pace. The combined effort boost you both so much. As you say, the sound a nice pair of wheels makes is unbeatable.

You weekly distance is excellent. Work and life get in the way of me exceeding 300 regularly, I sit at 250ish.

> The feeling you get when you find a smooth bit of road on a still day

If you have not already you should try rowing. When you get some speed on water it feels really good.

Just my opinion, but I feel like these kind of sports are unbalanced, because our muscles are mostly powerful for legs, of course rowing is still using legs, but not much more than arms

If you have proper rowing form your arms are almost entirely used just for holding on. The majority of your power comes from legs and core.

Not a professional rower, just looked into form when I was using a rowing machine.

As mentioned you are wrong on this: rowing is mostly legs, some core muscle and then a little arm. As you don't have your full weight on your knees it is a good way to get started on working your legs when you're overweight.

As someone who rows an actual boat once or twice almost every other summer I just want to say that rowing is mostly upper body and arms, with little to no legwork.

I guess we're not thinking of the same thing when writing about rowing.

I'm thinking of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowing_(sport)#/media/File:Avi... and if you do little legwork you're doing it wrong.

or it does when you're not rowing for time.

cycling on mostly flat roads is not as intense as running to be fair, what I like in cycling is going uphill out of the saddle, I used to do hills repeatedly like that, totalling a few vertical kilometers without refueling nor drinking, that gave great sensations

It's always a great idea to do regular cycling no matter the elevation as it's a great "compacting machine" for digestion

I meant "flat" as in not potholed to fuck, the roads where I am are completely destroyed

I actually live in a fairly hilly area, per 100 km I would expect to do at least 1,000 m elevation

I run but I always wanted to cycle, it is just sharing the road with cars feel super-scary to me. Do you have any advice?

I get up really early and stay on back roads. But for cars, there's a lot you can do in terms of road position and so on. For me, if I feel like I'm approaching a dangerous situation I move into the middle of the road. I also generally ride quite far away from the kerb. A lot of drivers will happily pass you way too close if you give them the opportunity, but there aren't a lot of people who will just drive straight through the back of you if you're in the way.

That leads into riding defensively. I ride with the mindset that everyone is trying to kill both me and themselves. I expect people to pull out in front of me, I expect doors to open etc.

To get a bit more used to being around cars I would recommend getting up early.

But really the main thing is confidence. You have just as much a right to be there as anyone else, and in reality the vast majority of drivers are great. I very rarely have bad experiences with cars. Obviously it takes time to build up confidence, but at the end of the day a confident, assertive rider who signals and manoeuvres well ahead of time is going to be safer than a nervous, skittish rider.

Look at gravel or mountain biking! If you live near some farmland, ranches or a national forest, there are likely miles of public dirt roads that hardly get any car traffic. trailforks.com is a good place to start to see what's near you.

If you start cycling, don't forget to keep running or start jumping - different muscles are involved. Practice of crashing (judo, aitrack) can't be underestimated.

The relative speed between vehicles it's what does matter - keep the flow (or between the waves), the distance and attention (doors, sideways, blind spots, bus stops), be obvious predictable, use your imagination (fly trajectory) and signaling - even take a middle of the road when needed to not confuse someone he can take a chance to overtake you at wrong moment.