Getting Going 🚦
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Beginnings are never easy? I’m not so sure of that. On November 14, 2009, I rode my new trike home from the bike shop. I was hooked before I had pedaled that one mile. Indeed, I was an instant mileage hog!
As I approached home, my legs said, Hey, we don’t want to stop! There’s a park with a cycling/pedestrian path only a mile from where I lived at the time; great for a beginning rider. So I bypassed home; pedaled to the park; and rode one lap before going home. Total distance, almost 5 miles. My legs were rubbery by the time I got home; but that didn’t stop me from riding almost daily after that.
During the first weeks, I did most of my riding in the park; and I soon noticed the posted speed limit of 10 mph for cyclists. How fast was I? I wasn’t speeding, was I? So I timed myself on one circuit of the park; and discovered that I could ride at 9 mph.
That was too close to the limit; and I don’t have money to waste on speeding tickets! I got a basic Cateye bicycle computer; and then I could keep tabs on my velocity. I figured that I’d get faster over time; so I wanted to know what my pace was.
I had jotted down brief descriptions of my rides almost from Day One. Now that I could determine how long any one route was, I made the best guesstimate I could of my mileage up to that time. Then I began regular tracking of miles and time. It was fun to watch the mileage total rise! The catch was, this first Cateye I had wasn’t wireless; and rain made it short out.
Speaking of mileage, I heard about century rides soon after getting my tricycle; and I found the very idea staggering. Push the pedals for one hundred miles in a single day? I was sure that I’d never do it. Wrong, as it eventually turned out. Never say never, as the saying goes!
Fast-forward to mid-2011. One day I was browsing through my mileage log for the previous few months; and saw that my weekly mileage total was often 90-plus. The thought seeped into my brain: Can I make it to 100 miles per week? Up popped a little imp that said, LET’S TRY!! And a long-distance cyclist was born.
Most weeks I made it to my 100-mile goal. I became increasingly interested in long-distance cycling, and read everything I could find about it. I did longer and longer Sunday rides, using them to experiment with various foods and electrolyte drinks.
By the end of 2011 I had done both a half century (50 miles in one day); and a metric century (100 kilometers, or ~62 miles). These weren’t organized rides; I just went out and rode. I had come to enjoy seeing how many miles I could get in. By this time a 100-mile day no longer seemed impossible, even on an adult trike, and I decided to go for it.