kingfishr

I have really enjoyed reading many of the interesting threads here and am really inspired by seeing what members in their 70's and 80's are capable of. Although I have been riding for 30+ years, I took a few years off to try to run a marathon, only to run into knee problems after a couple of years of training. Returning to biking again I decided to take another shot at the 300km Vättern Runt ride in Sweden, which I did in 10:56 in 2003 when I was 45 years old. So last summer I begain preparing and signed up with a local cycle club who had a group planning to ride in under 10 hours. Although it felt like it was going to be impossible last September, by May it felt like 50-50 odds. The ride was June 16 and the weather was terrible, 50 degrees and rain for the first 100 miles, if I had gotten a flat tire I would have happily jumped into a service car, but no such luck. Anyway at 150 miles the roads dried and the temperature was up to 60 which was just fine since I had my winter cycling clothes on. We crossed the finish line at 9:30, 1 hr and 26 minutes better than my time 9 years earlier. One of my greatest sources of inspiration has been the owner of the LBS, Håkan Persson who is 57, he finished the 300km ride in 6:41, riding together with a group of elite cyclists. Next year I am going to try for under 9 hours.

Since photography has been one of my great passions I have now tried to combine bicycling with photography and discovered GoPro cameras and have been making some shorter videos of the rides I have done and published them on YouTube. It's a great way to relive and share the experience.

Here's a couple of recent clips from Saturdays 122km ride
and last months club championship (where I finished 3rd from last)

Happy riding and greetings from Southern Sweden!
/Michael

freedomrider1

Nice videos Kingfish, You just go ahead and keep making goals and plans,thats what i'am going to do.Now i find at my age i might not be the fastest best dressed or outfitted to the max but i guarantee you i in the top of the group for having FUN.

jdon

Great job on the videos! Thanks for posting them.

icyclist 

Awesome vids. Congrats on being in such super-shape.

Through much of your first vid, you had a fairly high heart rate. On the second, your heart rate was much lower, and then you apparently died - no wonder you couldn't catch those riders in the last portion of vid. ;-)

kingfishr

On the first ride we had super hard winds, tail wind first 60km where I averaged around 36kph when we turned the corner the wind was blowing between 20-30 mph and in the second 60km my average was slightly under 30kph. But I managed to come in 6 minutes ahead of most of the rest of the club I met up with at 30km. Even the winner of this race was 8 minutes slower than last year. So next year, watch out...
The second video was our club championship and there I was able to ride in the peleton, with little or no wind. That made things much easier until I got dropped on that last hill. Nothing to do after that. Nonetheless I managed to average 37kph over the 30km course, and still beat 2 strong riders younger but heavier than me.

rumrunn6

simultaneous front/rear videos? seriously? that's excellent!

kingfishr

Thanks Bill, can't ever seem to get rid of a bike and the collection is growing:
Bought this one on a trip to France back in 1984. It is now hanging in my parents garage in San Diego where it is my summer ride.


Bought this one for my wife, but she never rides it


This one is now permanently mounted on my Tacx trainer (with normal wheels) and 9 speed Campy Chorus



And this is what I use when I need to keep up with the younger riders in the local cycle club:



Post ride the Swedes are big on hotdogs/sausages, or pasta at least after organized rides. But on the normal Sunday rides we stop at any one of a hundred cafes in the region and enjoy apple pie with vanilla cream topping and some strong coffee :-)

If you're ever in the neighborhood...

/Michael