I'm 69, 217 lbs (trying to get down to 185/190) and I generally ride 30 miles Monday, Wednesday, and Friday with 5 mile rides on Tuesday and Thursday for a 100 mile per week total. My average speeds just hit 13 mph for my 30 mile rides.

When the weather is not good (rain, cold, and, yes, it does get too cold for me to ride), I go to my church's gym and use their stationary bike or walk. I find the stationary bike is harder than riding a regular bike outside.

The three medical problems I have are hypertension (controlled very well by drugs), high cholesterol (should be dropping), and COPD from forty-six years of smoking. I've been off the cigarettes for a little over five years now. What I am going to do is have my doctor give me a thorough physical this December and see if I'm making progress and if there are any issues we need to address.

Quite frankly, I'm feeling a lot better than I have in years and hope this continues.

As for the poster who said he'd pull a Kevorkian when he couldn't ride: Just don't do what one of my young soldiers did many years ago. The idiot tried to commit suicide by eating four boxes of a famous chocolate-flavored laxative!! Most miserable one human being I've ever seen and wasn't helped at all by all the rest of us laughing at him.