Yesterday was a good day for me. I managed to achieve a goal that I had set for myself back in January. When I took on the name Fat Archaeologist, I did it to force myself to lose weight and get riding my bike. I set out two simple goals. One was to lose 30 lbs before the Tour de France and the other was to be comfortable enough on my bike to go on long bike rides. As I’ve said before, I haven’t lost 30 lbs—I’ve lost about 22 and I’m pretty happy with that.
The other goal was contingent on losing the weight—going on long bike rides. I’ve never specifically defined a long bike ride. Before yesterday I had gone about 24 miles and I thought that was pretty good, but I really wanted to be able to go further. More recently, at the urging of my cycling friend Clem I decided that I could do 30 miles before le Tour and 40 miles before its end. Yesterday I got up extra early (5:30) and prepared to shoot for 30 miles. (As an aside, I’ve always maintained that if you get up any time before 5:45 am you actually are getting up the night before.) I ate some yogurt, made a sandwich out of zucchini bread and honey, and drank some water. Then I set out on my ride.
Most of the time I ride a 7-mile loop through town and just do laps depending on how far I want to go. Each loop starts with a short flat, then a nice long downhill, followed by a long flat, then a long incline that is followed by a short flat, a short downhill and a short and nasty hill that finishes with a nice, long flat. Yesterday I did 5 loops. During the first couple I felt tight and a bit uncomfortable. Then after about 12 miles I felt pretty good. As I finished off loop 4 and saw that I had gone roughly 28 miles I felt good. I decided that rather than just riding circles around my house until I did those last two miles that I would do another loop. It sounded good at the time and I was fine until I got to that long incline.
My legs had pretty well had it. If I had made two sandwiches I might have felt better, but I didn’t and I didn’t. Near the bottom of the incline I started to feel a little sick and by the time I got to the top I almost threw up. There is only one good thing about almost throwing up and that is the fact that you didn’t actually throw up. I struggled my way home to find my kids waiting for me on the sidewalk outside my house. They were amazed to hear that I had gone 34 miles. I was amazed that I had gone that far. To me 24 miles sounded far, but not that far…anything over 30 still sounds far to me. I realize I am a novice and that 100 miles is REALLY far…I just took a little ride yesterday. Still, I was pretty happy about it. I felt like crap all day yesterday and my legs are still sore today, but it feels good to achieve.
I woke up early this morning to write a post for this blog. I actually have some advice I wanted to dispense. Before I could start, my son came into the room and said, “Daddy, your bike is gone.” Sure enough, my bike is gone. We drove around the neighborhood just in case some drunken fool took it and rode it until they got tired and just dumped it. No luck, though. I am afraid that bike is long gone.
Now I live right on a busy street in a downtown neighborhood and I generally leave my bike near the back door to the house. It is visible from the sidewalk but we always have some flood lights on out back. My wife has warned me that I should lock it up, but I just didn’t really listen. Oh, I’ve been talking about buying or building some type of shed to house our bikes, skateboards, scooters, etc. So far it has been just talk. Anyway, so you could argue that I had this coming. That I was stupid for assuming someone wouldn’t come through my fence and into my back yard to swipe my bike. At a certain level you could be right. Still, at another level I refuse to live my life as if there is always someone around the next corner ready to screw me.
I realize that is foolish and naïve and as long as I continue to think that way I will pay for my unwarranted faith in the goodness of humanity. I wonder what it will be next time?
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