50 miles

Not quite 5 years ago, I had just quit my job and was using my time trying to mitigate 5 years of smoking and the 20 extra pounds I'd picked up along the way. I'd been riding my mountain bike again for a year or so (not too seriously), but had just purchased a road bike, which I had ridden 2 or 3 times. At some point around then, my brother and I were talking about riding, and he commented that a 50-mile ride was pretty hard. For some reason, I didn't really believe him, and decided I'd go ride 50 miles to prove that even a new rider could do it. (Of course, living now where he did then, I know that his "50-mile ride" was actually closer to 70 miles, without a flat spot on it, and with a 2,000 foot climb right in the middle. So I guess it was at least a little bit difficult.)

My corporate sponsor dropped my off on her way to work, and I had only one route home. They don't pave too many roads in Wyoming. Four hours later, after stopping to beg water from an elementary school and climbing the final 1,000 feet to my road, I see that I've only ridden 46 miles. I'm a stubborn bastard. I continue up the road for two miles, and then turn back into the wind and ride the longest two miles of my life. I think I was pushing 5 mph, bonked cold, not believing I'd ever make it home. I did, and immediately passed out for another 4 hours.

Five years and a few rides later, 50 miles is just another ride. Today was 52 miles and 2 hours, 40 minutes. It was windy. And there were even a few climbs. I stopped to get the mail at the end and then played basketball with my son.

The point is not that I'm a bad ass. I'm not. But we spend too much of our time worrying about who we are not, what we haven't done, who we wish we could be. We don't spend enough time looking back at where we've been. How far we've come. How interesting the path has been. We forget about the journey.

I entered a beginner mountain bike race in June 2003, and it took a lot of convincing to get me there. I didn't think I'd ever be good enough to upgrade to sport. Today I was talking to the King of Denzer, and when I told him I was thinking of downgrading, he told me that's b.s., I should be upgrading. And then, two 35-year-old men, with 3.5 kids and maybe 10 hours of sleep per night between us, spent 15 minutes figuring out if we could upgrade to something that's probably hard to upgrade to. And it didn't seem unreachable. Will it happen? Highly unlikely. But it didn't seem impossible.

And that change is the best part of the journey. Doing now what you wouldn't have done then. Believing something that seemed impossible then. And realizing that even if you don't get there, you've still had a lot of fun.

You get dropped in your first race. Then you don't. Then eventually you are at the front, even if just for a moment. It doesn't matter what race you are in, what it says on your license. There was a day when you were off the back before the first turn. That doesn't happen anymore.