On exercise, and fitting it all in...

I use an online cycling program. It's pretty geeky. As may become evident, through these posts, I'm a cyclist. In the spring, summer and fall, here in central Ontario, I bike everywhere, and get a healthy amount of exercise doing so.
In winter, I ride online.
You pay a monthly fee to use this online program. Riding your bike, on your trainer in your basement, your trainer sends power / wattage data to your computer and to the game, and the sweat and effort you produce on your bike at home, is transferred to your character in the game. It makes indoor training not only bearable, but fun.
But here's the problem:
At the moment, winter 2018, I'm squeezing either exercise, or writing, into a narrow "wee hours of the morning" time frame, before the rest of my house wakes up, and before the rest of my life begins. Increasingly, I have misgivings about all the time I spend exercising, instead of writing.
I recently listened to an episode of Don't Keep Your Dayjob while riding my bike, and one of the guests gave that advice that many of us have heard before, which is that all you can really control is how hard you worked each day - in particular, how hard you worked on achieving some hard to attain goal. You have to beat everyone else in this area - YOU have to be the person who worked harder than everyone else each day.
Basically agreeing with this, I then begin to think, did that hour on my bike this morning help me become a better writer?
No, it didn't.
So why do it?
I don't know. But I find it hard to give up.

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