Reflection On The Past Before Starting This Year’s Biking Season.

With gyms closed to Covid, way back in August 2020, I started riding my bicycle five days a week as a way to get ready for the ski season. I live in North Texas where the terrain is relatively flat. We don’t have hills or mountains, we have rises. I also decided to ride on neighborhood streets because there are crazy people driving while reading and sending texts and emails.

Arbitrarily, my initial goal was to ride 15-20 miles a day, four to five times a week at a steady speed of around 10 miles an hour. My Trek Navigator 400 has three ranges and eight speeds within each range.

My road cycling career began back in the fifties on a Raleigh bike with three speeds which we upgraded to six. Back then, I was a 13-year-old member of an Air Explorer troop in Germany. We-our scout masters, parents and us scouts- decided to take a long-distance bike trip during the summer.

Several conditioning/trial trips later, we took the train from Frankfurt to Calais, the ferry to Dover and another train to London. Four days later, we took the Tube to Watford and headed out to the youth hostel in Stratford-on-Avon. Six weeks later, we were back in London after having visited more castles and churches than I can remember.

There were other bike trips in the following two summers, and, from them, I learned three important facts about biking. One, the youth hostel or inn where we were staying was always upwind at the top of the highest hill in the area.

Two, one can ride farther than one thinks. Back then as an Air Explorer, we tried to do 50-75 miles a day, depending on the terrain. Where it was relatively flat, 75 miles in a day was a no brainer. Hills and rises, well, that’s different

Three, bike seats are uncomfortable.

Fast forward six plus decades and after seven months of biking, the lessons learned have not changed. My house/destination is at the highest point in the neighborhood and on the last mile or two, whatever wind is blowing, it is in my face.

When I started, I could barely ride eight miles.  I’d ride remembering some of the tougher legs on those three trips. When this post was sent, weather permitting, 12 miles per day, four to five days a week is the norm. Going father is more about time available than fatigue. At an average of roughly 10.6 mph, 12 miles takes an hour and 10 minutes. Twenty miles would take close to two hours which is more time than I want to spend pedaling since I have other things to do, like write books and magazine articles.

And guess what, even with a wider, padded seat on my bike, after 12 miles, my butt still hurts!