When the weather began to warm in the spring of 2018, I started bike shopping. I knew that I wanted to stay with a hybrid bike, but with an aluminum frame and a few more gears. I decided on a Trek FX3 from a local bike shop in Decatur. It cost several hundred dollars, but I was already eyeing some of the other Trek bikes in the shop… ones with carbon frames and a comma on the pricetag.
I finished my second Cap City Century that September, and then someone, somewhere, put my name on the mailing list for Ride Illinois, the cycling advocacy and safety association. Every year, it seems, they publish a cycling guide of various organized cycling tours throughout the state; pretty much every town that’s large enough to have a bike shop has a cycling club, and every cycling club sponsors its own cycling event. In the case of Ride Illinois, they sponsor the Grand Illinois Bike Tour, a six-day, 300-ish mile trip through a different region of the state. The Tour had actually been in the Springfield area in June of 2018, because I’d seen signs and road markings for it when I was riding that summer, but I had no clue what it was. When I got the invitation for the 2019 ride (to be held in east-central Illinois), I signed up for yet another new experience on two wheels.
Riders in the GIBT have two options: camping or hoteling. I chose the former. The ride organizers haul everyone’s gear by truck from site to site. When you finish that day’s ride and arrive at the campsite, you grab your gear and pitch your tent. The following day, when you’re moving to the next town, you strike camp, throw your gear in the truck, and start cycling. I had done a pretty good job prepping for the ride: I knew that I could ride 50-60 in a day, but I had never done it on consecutive days, let alone six consecutive days, so I rode 40+ miles on all three days of Memorial Day weekend and declared myself ready.
I was ready for the physical demands of the ride. What I wasn’t prepared for was the discovery that, at age 58, I was below the median age of the group. In retrospect, that discovery was something of an epiphany: until then, there was a part of me that was holding back. As much as I loved riding a bike, I felt I had essentially squandered 30 years just putzing around on neighborhood streets, and now, in my late 50’s, it was too late to go all-in. Except it wasn’t.
Sure, cycling can be physically demanding–and when a 20 mph headwind comes at you unimpeded, it can be downright brutal–but you’re sitting for most of the time. There’s no impact on hips, knees, and ankles (unlike running), you don’t get water up your nose (unlike swimming), and you can be alone with your thoughts (unlike pickleball). I mean, I had squandered a whole bunch of time, but it wasn’t too late.
There was still time.
Rideworthy 