Yeah, I did quit. I did career from ~22 on, and hadn't been on a bike since I was 18. All I did was work - I was self-employed, the usual 70 hour work week. Then one day when I was 50, I stumbled on the way to the mailbox. I thought, "I do not stumble." Not my self-image. The next day, my wife and I bought $100 steel 10-speeds. I did have a big advantage: my work was to be always on my feet, performing skilled manual labor, so I wasn't a couch potato. All the same, just going up a little hill on that bike had lung bits on my shoes. It was just a matter of doing a little more every week, like everyone else. I spent 2 years putting down that deep base. From that trip to the mailbox, I've never quit. Anyway, that's how I know what it takes to get going again. There are those first panting climbs and all those efforts to extend the point at which one becomes exhausted. I did get a set of resistance rollers pretty quickly, so I could have an hour's go on them every day after work. "After work" was a new policy my wife instituted, as was taking one day off a week. I was always a terrible employee but a good self-starter.

I've been "lucky" never to have had any serious physical problems, but I always kept myself somewhat fit, skiing, hiking, and backpacking. My wife provided an excellent diet. When I met her, she couldn't walk between 1st and 2nd Avenue in Seattle without stopping to catch her breath a couple times, for those locals who know what that means. In 2015, we rode RAMROD, 154 miles, 10,000' gain on our tandem, team age 136. Not many tandems to be seen on RAMROD. Yeah, it was hard. For the last 4 miles on Cayuse Pass, the last big climb, we rode for 15', stopped for 1 minute, repeated 4 times. The last 45 miles were easy, tandem time! We were 15 hours elapsed time. My wife says, "Never again!" We'll get out for 60, 2200', on the tandem this Sunday.