1. Thanks to all for the responses. It is a definite boost.
2. I'm very poor so I don't have much more than basic equipment.
3. I live in the Illinois/Iowa area around the Quad Cities. Moline, Rock Island, Davenport, Bettendorf. Most of my riding was done on the local trail system. Some was done on less busy rural roads.
4. I made what I thought was a radical decision to ride two days hard, take a day off, and ride two days hard again. I did ride on my off days, but it was always under ten miles and generally under five miles. I thought I'd be doing fifty miles on hard days. But, the mileage just kind of crept up on me.
5. As to time to allow for this: Originally it would have simply meant three to four hours a day. I live alone, (I was a single parent) and my son is grown. I have a difficult time holding a job due to the psychological residue of an extremely unpleasant situation in which I found myself unable to get away from very long term sexual harassment. As I said, I was a single parent. I had to work. I'm male, and didn't want to admit that what was happening had as much impact as it did. In the end I could barely look people in the eye, I was pretty much non-functional sexually, and felt as if I'd been brutalized by a prison gang. Generally, the folks doing this, disregarded my military experience, my college education and simply demanded that if I wanted to work, I put up with it. Once my son got old enough, I couldn't take it any more and just stopped. I was once told it had to do with AA. But, I've never really been able to prove that.