Self-supported, long bicycle rides have some advantages over organized ones: you are free to start whenever you want and they are dirt-cheap. They also practice a concept Theodore Roosevelt loved to preach: rugged individualism. After all, in case of breakdown or navigation errors, you’re on your own.
There are many organized bicycle rides that honor specific foods. For example, there is the Giro de Vino (wine) through the vineyards of my old cycling grounds of Lodi, California; the San Francisco Tour de Ice Cream; and the Texan Tour de Donut. But as far as I know, there hasn’t been a ride specifically for one of cyclists’ favorite foods: pasta. That is, at least until my friend Scott devised his very own Noodles 2 Noodles century last year. That ride went so well that he decided to do it again this year — this time in the company of friends. Continue reading »
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived,” said Henry David Thoreau.
These words resonated in my mind as I biked over to Walden for my annual double century. Never mind that this was not the Walden in Massachusetts where Mr. Thoreau lived the life of an ascetic between 1845 and 1847, but rather a town of 600 people 60 miles east of Steamboat Springs in Colorado. Continue reading »
Up to this point, my run mileage for the year exceeded my bicycling mileage — something that is particularly remarkable because I had been running fewer times per week than a toddler gets up to run around the living room within 10 minutes. This is to say that I had been cycling very, very infrequently this year. This was not good considering that a 9.8-mile time trial up Vail Pass I already registered for was coming up soon. As in the following week. Continue reading »
“The distance from my house to the Nebraska border is exactly 100 miles,” a Fort Collinser named Mike told me at the Jorge Torres presentation the other day. “If you go out-and-back, it would be 200…”
Nebraska? It sounded intriguing for my final long ride of the year, designed to be about 200 miles so as to continue a double century streak going back to 1996. Continue reading »
Today I decided to get out of bed a bit early (3:45 am) and ride my bicycle all day. Quite literally (200 miles…)
What possessed me to do such a thing, you might ask. It wasn’t just a case of being unable to count sheep to fall asleep, or having too much caffeine the night before. Actually, there were three reasons: 1) every year since 1996 I have ridden a double century and still needed to do one this year to continue that streak, 2) I was eager to check out the Colorado fall colors that had been exploding out of the trees as of late, and 3) it sounded like a much better idea than, say, working. Continue reading »
This self-supported 100-mile bike ride starts at the new Stonehenge in Fort Collins, Colorado and goes out and back on Highway 14. Unimaginative, yes, but there are only a handful of stop signs and is reasonably flat for time-trialing. Continue reading »
