Ancient Order of Badger - first half-century - Page 9 - Cycling Mob: Road Cycling, Mountain Biking and More

05-23-2004, 02:30 PM

On Sun, 23 May 2004 16:21:03 -0500, Neil Cherry <[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]> wrote:

>
>BTW, so as not to belittle the accomplishments of the original poster,
>my first rides where short rides of 7 miles at about 12 mph. That was
>15 years ago. All the little goals such as better speed, pace lines,
>metrics, centuries and double centuries are amazing. Eventually things
>like riding in the rain will be cool (at least dring the heat of the
>summer) and you'll view things like a short ride as 30 miles at
>lunch. Weekend rides are metrics and centuries. Weird! Hey at least
>I'm not into brevets (yet!). ;-)

No belittlement taken, Neil. Congrats!

I've got lots of gnarly and long training in my past as a swimmer and
runner, and some biking from 30+ years ago...

I've already improved past the point I might imagine - for me even the goal
of riding every day for >250ish days is pretty self-inspiring.

I ride in the rain and cold, actually, by choice, b/c it means a clear bike
path of peds and dawgs. <g>

I can see speed and metrics coming as well as graduating to clipless Looks
and other things - maybe not even a year or two down the road.

The 50miler was extremely easy as I mentioned - of course I had skipped the
previous day's pm ride, but got in the am ride, so my body was saying: "hey
we had a break!". I had been doing two-a-days for three months and some
cases three-a-days, even if 10-15 miles, it was day in and day out, and
total daily was 20 or 22 miles.

Brevets? Hell I dream of Adventure Racing. I've got the Eco challenges and
I play them over and over... Brevets would be something on the way to that,
but I'm put together in that mode of strange biking at night and staying up
all night riding and running and stuff - just gotta convert the body to
light and fast from my current beefy model. ;-p

Funny story - I was kidding my brother about somehow simulating an
Eco-challenge by riding some long distance in Va Beach and then getting up
in Canoes or in Triathlon wetsuits and finding some hookup route to swim
like in the bay, or something. He was 'man the place in the Bay you
mentioned is so bad that when we were in it in the canoe fishing, I was
dreading the canoe capsizing - I certainly would not want to swim in that -
muck and bugs and evil stuff!' A few years ago, I came in to Va Beach from
out of town and parked at this place that had a lake and put on my fins and
went in for a cooling swim. Suddenly this etheric and electronic voice
called out from somewhere "Sir, you must get out of the water immediately -
swimming is NOT allowed".

Turns out I had accidently found "Mount Trashmore" and pond next to it.
Garbage makes up the "Mount" and there's seepage from the trash (possible,
not a real health risk for a short plunge). I got out and looked around and
across the 'pond' there was a control tower - explaining the voice over
their loudspeaker - and like 'OK, my bad' and got in the car. My bro about
split a gut when I innocently told him.

-Badger

05-23-2004, 03:42 PM