rain miles count double

After been a keen mountain biker and commuter for years, in the mid/late 1990′s I stopped riding bikes for a long time, maybe ten years or so. I left university, got married, moved far away from the city where I worked … life got busy and complicated, as it has a habit of doing.

Then, on a day in early summer 2008, I woke up, realised I was 35 and (a bit) overweight, and started cycling again, just like that, attempting a couple of miles into the nearby village and back again. In the beginning I had to stop to rest a couple of times per ride, even over that short distance, and the gentle incline back to my apartment was a real leg breaker. I kept at it every other night over the summer months (rain or not), building up the distances on my rusty old 1992 Diamondback Ascent mountain bike, until I was doing 15 or 20 miles most rides and pushing out to 30 on occasions.

I’d changed jobs as well and the company had just moved to a brand new building, complete with showers and bike sheds. I started cycle commuting a couple of days a week, then sometimes three, now regularly three and sometimes four plus long Sunday rides over 40 miles when I get the chance. The original 7 mile downhill route to work has been replaced by a flat 9 miler that I more or less sprint the whole way. I extend my return journey once or twice a week and usually incorporate a hill I knew six months ago as the “Hill Of Legular Death” with no trouble.

I’ve learned a lot about cycling technique. training and nutrition over the past six months, the great melting pot of knowledge and opinion that is the internet has been the major source of my education in this regard. Though far from expert, I feel I now know more about the sport than I ever did. Twelve years ago, as a relatively young man of 24, I was cycling to work on that same old Diamondback along the same 7 mile commuting route but in the opposite direction. When I do that route in that direction these days, I’m doing it faster than all those years ago.

It’s affected my thinking in other ways too. I realise that I now know the approximate distance and terrain to various towns around where I live, so I can judge the effort required to cycle there and back. I was speaking to an uncle recently and he invited me to visit his retirement cottage by the sea. “You’re about 17 miles from here, aren’t you?” was the first thing I asked, instantly mentally evaluating the feasibility of doing the round trip by bike.

When people hear that I cycle to work, then they hear it’s 9 miles, they look at me like I’m a crazy person for cycling “that far”. I look back at them like they’re crazy for thinking 9 miles is a big distance on a bike, I consider it a warm up!

My only regret is that lost decade of rides.