I am just about to the one year anniversary of my starting to ride a bike as an adult. In that twelve months I have ridden 2,000 miles. I know that many of you easily do much more than that, but I am pleased with the number.
I spent the first three months working my way up to being able to ride an 45 minutes to an hour a day, five to six days a week. So I now have managed to continue that time commitment for almost nine months. This means that I ride 10 miles a day, five days a week. With the other two days spent walking and resting my legs. On my saturday rides, I go about twenty miles and once did 30 without much difficulty.
The main reason I haven't done any longer rides yet is my speed. While it has been slowly increasing over the course of a year (from about 7mph average to about 11-12mph average now). So a 20 mile ride on Saturday takes about two hours, the 30 took almost three. And I don't have much more time than that on a regular basis.
I had decided that sometime this year I wanted to accomplish a metric century. Today I stopped in at Subway to purchase lunch and they had a brochure for this years Dallas / Fort Worth Tour de Cure on July 23rd. I had considered this in the past but decided against it. Today I changed my mind. When I returned from Subway, I got online, registered, and made a personal donation to cover my minimum donation requirement. I'll send emails this weekend to family, friends, and co-workers letting them no I am riding and asking for additional donations...
Even though I haven't ridden this distance yet, I feel fairly comfortable I could do so tomorrow if I wanted to (its only twice my longest distance which I did without any problem). Probably would be beat and pretty sore, but still doable. So I am comfortable that by the time July 23rd comes along I will be able to do the full metric century without much personal misery.
Just glad that my brooks saddle should be well "broken in" by then!
Just wanted to publicly share to give me a reason not to change my mind.
