When you do a bike trip normally one part sends signals first, the one that meets the saddle. But where else can you feel that you are biking? Lets start from down to up!
Depending on what kind of shoes you use your feet can just hurt or be deafened and numb. When you bike more than one day also your soles tell you that they exist, but it normally the rest is predominant. Next are your legs: you have knees and when you do some hills or mountains, they can tell you that this is hard, but if they are not too outworn you more easily can concentrate on your hurting muscles. I now remember, that more than ones, I had muscle cramps the first day and wonder why (and yet I am happy that!) this didn’t continue! Maybe because of some training I only have slight muscle soreness although I couldn’t make training equalling more than 100km rides for several days.
Now the main part…
sitting is no fun at least for me latest after 15km. And in this case after a few days, it was not only a matter of feeling but of open skin. So whenever I am not distracted by other pain or by the traffic or by finding my way, or, or, or, – I could indulge myself in this special malaise. Only remedy apart from distraction “stand-up pedalling”, but this as other side-effects like exhaustion and harder to stay in your track when you have little space aside roaring traffic.
I wonder how many days (weeks? months??) this will be a topic, I only know from playing the guitar that I grow harder skin after a while, but we all know the difference between this and that….
Ok, moving upwards we have the back and the shoulders and the neck and all of them can hurt and then you can move a little, try to find a more correct position or concentrate on the saddle ?
On the other side of your back is your stomach. It shouldn’t be empty and it shouldn’t be full – easy job!
My next problem are the hands, they also can be deafened of course but after some hours the wrists hurt and I fear the “Loge de Guyon-Syndrom” that I once had because of biking (needed 5-6 months to disappear)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulnar_tunnel_syndrome
To continue, your head is left:
your nose can get strong smells from overrun animals and engines, your ears can be stressed a lot from the never ending noise from cars and trucks, your eyes have to cope sunlight, wind, sand and other Materia and in combination with your senses you really have to concentrate most of the time!
Always checking the surface, the traffic, the route is necessity and sometimes like hard work, allowing no mistakes.
I don’t want to forget sweating (especially under a helmet and drops running into your eyes and sunburn in the hot season and frozen hands and feet in winter or freezing all over when you get wet.
So, you can say riding a bike is training for the whole body.
And the funny thing is: even if you are alone on a smooth street without front wind, flowers smelling, birds singing, the sun not biting, nothing especially hurting, no cars, no dogs, no hills you still will benefit from biking!