Yes that is the one...!!

where I grew up. I was the champion…possibly the only sport where I could beat my sisters and those pesky boys next door. These days, my rides take me along beaches and I often get to see whales and dolphins etc. I never tire of it.

Was not too long ago about 3 months or so when I got an invitation to ride with a local club… Me being me could not refuse a new way to know a little more, besides of the personal challenge…. (talking to Mister Frank not long ago he told me that he never saw me, he was inviting the guy that was about a minute ahead of me in a little hill when I got there he felt sorry and gave me one invitation too)
So I checked the club schedule called Mister Frank wrote the directions and went to my first ever race…. Thursday night series is called….
The race simple a loop of about 8 miles, go around 3 times…. Rolling terrain nothing crazy (now)…
Mister F was in the first group of 5 guys me in it… We started with about 2 minutes advantage on the next group…. As we start everyone takes off and I just had to look at everyone get lost in front of my eyes without me having either the strength, experience or skill to keep up with any of them…. We didn’t hit the first bump on the route yet…. Wait it gets even worst….
First hill ahead… Mister Frank stays with me (I didn’t know the route) I literaly think I was going backwards in this hill… Mister Frank gets next to me grabs my jersey/panths and pushes me up the hill telling me you are doing ok… keep going..!!! (Sad face for me)
Little explanation here… Mister Frank Quinn Secretary of the club and my mentor… 65 years old, cancer patient (leukemia) Goes to treatment 2 times a week…
This is why I am refusing to give up..! Why I ride, train and race every time I can…
This is my story of how one small Club race changed me….

Dig out those memories..! Don’t be shy..! Every story is unique..! Share with us..!

How about snippets from a few that came to mind:

First Long Ride with the big guys: Group ride not long after I started cycling. Included a couple of guys who raced in Europe. They were on a recovery day and I turned myself inside out just to stay with them, and they still had to wait for me… Genuinely nice guys. Introduced me to the culture of cycling and set the standard for me when it came too introducing others to the sport.

First solid attack from off the front, instead of dragging my sorry arse back to the tail end of the group. Ahh so this is what the front of the race looks like. I felt like I was off and away, visions of a solo 20km win were quickly dashed 3km later, but it felt wonderful!

My midweek long ride: A weekly ritual that lasted almost 3 yrs. Rain, hail or shine 2 or 3 of us met at 4:00am and knocked off 120-160km in the mountains behind Brisbane. My ride would end at the coffee shop next to work and a slow espresso with some tasty pastry, while I read the morning paper and let the world catch up to me. Made me feel like a “real racing cyclist doing serious training”.

The Most Beautiful Ride in the World: A solid +200km ride through the hinterland of the Gold Coast in Australia. Over Tambourine, down to Canungra, up over Beechmont, down through the Numinbah Valley across the border into NSW and then back up the Tweed Coast, through the Gold Coast and back to Brisbane. Includes rainforest, mountains and beaches. It lives up to the name! Is there a better way to see the countryside than with a couple of good friends and from the saddle of a bike?

1000km in 4 days: Easter in Aus involves a 4 day weekend. I used to challenge myself to clock up 1000km over those 4 days. Didn’t make it my first attempt, but did the second yr and a few subsequent yrs too. I usually turned up to work on the Tuesday dead tired, but damn happy! Cycling fuels my soul.

That epic ride where I was lost for 2 hours in the middle of the night on a road in the middle of nowhere that became a trail that became a track that eventually became a road again (that was in the middle of a +400km solo ride, ahh the days when I had time for rides like that!) For Queenslanders, this was somewhere between Beaudesert and Boonah, and I swear that on my map the road went all the way up and over that range.. (this was before the days when we all carry GPS) Never, EVER give in (even if the smart thing was to turn back :-)

Hanging in for 10 complete laps around the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. This was a sign that I was getting fitness back after a moving to a different hemisphere, and different world and not riding enough for far too long. 10 × 3 mile laps, often completed in an hour or less. Fast! The next phase was being able to launch and participate in breakaways off the front of that ride. I believe the phrase is “chewing the bar tape”… If you are hurting, odds are they are too.

Yes, I’ve been riding for a long time, yes I have a thousand and one stories about riding my bike, and yes, I really, really enjoy riding a bike… I didn’t even mention the mountain lion, the trail covered in tarantulas or the drunks sitting in the back of their pick up trucks, shooting into the dry creek bed while listening to blaring mariachi music……

“Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.”

Probably about 6 months after I first started commuting by bike I was riding home from Nth Sydney, over the Harbour Bridge, in the middle of a rather large and impressive spring storm. Lightning was crashing in the city, looking like it may strike a building (not really but the drama played out in my mind). The rain was lashing and the winds were strong. It was about 8 at night, so dark.

I was feeling the sting of the rain and idly wondering if it’d turn to hail when I realised that nobody else was out in this weather. I mean, nobody. Cars were pulling off the road. And I was riding. As I came round the off-ramp from the southern end of the bridge, there’s a wicked little off-camber sweeping right-hander. That was when my rear tyre blew out. It exploded loudly enough that I heard it over the storm. I didn’t see what I hit, but that didn’t matter right then.

I was sweeping downhill in the driving rain, in the dark, on a flapping rear, all sorts of things could have gone wrong, but none of them did. I stayed up, I controlled the stop, I was fine. I couldn’t help myself. I started laughing so hard. I pulled off, huddled in a pedestrian tunnel, changed the tyre, kept the tube inflated super low so it wouldn’t blow through the sidewall tear and rode home feeling like the baddest motherfucker on earth.

To me cycling represents a wildness and sense of being carefree that is increasingly difficult to grasp hold of. I’m a total pussy, but cycling helps me cope with that.

after giving this a little thought it seems there are only two or three rides that stick out in my mind more than any others.

The first was my first successful real ride. Around when i was 20 and living in austin texas i went out on a ride to give cycling a try and it was a disaster – didn’t like the traffic, the too big roads, and most of all, the hills. Man what is this with your legs hurting and barely being able to crawl up these hills? You go as fast as a snail and it hurts your legs like crazy??? Not for me, back to the basketball court. Then again more than 20 years later while staying in france and buying a brand new road bike for about $400 just to get around – i loved the bike, was the best bike i’d ever had by far and then i’d see these lycra dudes riding around everywhere all the time. I thought, why not give it another try? Same result though, total disaster – too much traffic, hills bugged the shit out of me – especially the last one before getting home – just killed me – and same thing, legs hurting like crazy while i crawl up a little hill??? Nah, not for me. And how the hell do people do it?

Well a few years later, now living in france with the same bike and a bad back i decided to give cycling another try – this time in an area of france i thought was pretty flat. Went up to burgundy on summer vacation and stayed with my girlfriend’s sort of martial arts/etc group in a campground. One guy in the group was a local cyclist and suggested a loop for me to go on for my first ride. It was about 75 km or so with a fair bit of hills in it, unbeknownst to me. Little did i know that cyclists from flattish areas seek out hills. Who would have imagined such a crazy thing? I mean, cyclists are so stoopid.

So i head out in the morning – sandals, normal shorts and shirt, a lunch in the backpack. Ride along a little stream – beautiful. Then the road heads up. And then it heads up and then it heads up. Damn. I’m hurting like mad and hating it but sticking in there. Climbing up through the forest, finally i can see the end of this torture where the forest turns to fields. But lo and behold, i finally get to the field and damned if the road isn’t still going up. Bloody hell! And i’m going slower and slower and every time i think i see the end of the climbing, … well, it’s not. And again, i come to the remorseful conclusion that this sport is for nuts or mutants or something and damned sure not for me.

But there is my girlfriend and all those people back at camp and they’re gonna ask how i did on the ride. Plus i had really high expectations for this – cycling was kind of my last hope given my bad back that wouldn’t let me do much else. So i stuck with it and stuck with it. Just resigned myself kind of to climbing so damn slowly up that plateau.

And then a funny thing happened, i got to the frickin top. And i could pedal. And i had energy. And i could go fast and i was all right and hell this was kind of fun. Little tiny road, beautiful countryside, no cars and me cruisin after all that horrible climbing. Then next thing you know i’m on some really cool road – tiny, slight downhill so that you have to pedal but you can go really fast by pedaling as hard as you can. And i’m just flying. By the forests, the meadows, the meandering stream, along the ridge and through the fields and so on and so on. Wow, what a blast! I guess i’ll never forget it.

And then on the way back there were some more climbs and i had learned to have the patience necessary to just keep pedaling, let my legs hurt, knowing i’d eventually get to the top and all would be cool. I was sold on the sport from that moment on – figured out soon their was a reason for all those funny clothes and so on and so forth.

So the second ride was like 2 years later. Again on summer vacation. This time we came down from burgundy to the alps and came over the col d’izoard and then camped halfway up the col d’agnel. I didn’t know squat about cycling so i’d never heard of them but we drove over izoard to get to our camping and i saw the impressive road and views and all the paint on the roads and girlfriend told me it was a famous climb in the tour. So i was like, man i’ve got to try this (i’d really gotten used to climbing by this time – although had never done something of this magnitude).

So i did try it and in the early part, going up that valley where it doesn’t look like you’re doing anything and you have the mountains towering above you but yet the slope is pretty steep and … well again i was just crawling. And suffering. And just thinking things weren’t looking too good. When i finally got to the forest where you really start going up i was thinking i’d never make it. But i thought, well i probably won’t make it but i’m also not dead yet. I mean, i’m not ready to stop yet. So just keep going up for another 100 meters of elevation and see what happens.

So i kept doing that, another hundred, another hundred. Got into a rhythm that was slower than i’d wanted, but was working. And then i just got higher and higher – and i’m not just talking elevation here cuz man some endorphins must have been kicking in or something cuz i swear i was getting high as a kite. Anyway, eventually it became clear i was going to make it and i was having the time of my life. I did eventually make it, finally even managed to pass one guy walking and one old guy on a bike (probly 80 years old or something) and then i was one of those guys you see every now and then whooping and hollering all the way down the descent. Heh heh.

I rode it again two days later, much better prepared mentally and having an idea of how to pace myself. Passed a fair number of people that time and finished several minutes faster. Later rode the col d’agnel and from that time on i took my cycling to another level – gave me whole other level of motivation – bought a better bike and increased my riding quite a lot each year since then (except this year due to health).

Then the last one i guess was my first ever gran fondo type thing – first time to ever ride with other people. Found out i wasn’t such a bad climber and that i totally sucked as a descender. And that, you know, it helps to train before you do something hard like that. You can’t just do it easily because you did stuff almost as hard last year. Was fun but i died on the last climb. Man did i ever die. Even wound up with a messed up ankle and couldn’t ride for a couple weeks afterwards. My girlfriend was there at the road side, waiting and waiting (some funny stories with the old guys there to point the riders in the right direction), cheering me on as i slowly rolled past, and then met me at the end and took a video while interviewing me after my “grand exploit.” Was very funny to be interviewed, we both kept laughing, and i realized later that hey, my french is not as bad as all that. Voila, the end.

No one has anything to share? Too many you don’t know what to pick? Or just too lazy to write? Can’t wait to read the next great ride..! So far great stuff..! Thanks guys..!