TRAINING TO GET READY
While I had done lots of biking including multiple century rides (rides of over 100 miles) and actually led a 5-week bike trip in Europe in my late 20’s in 1992, I really had not been doing much biking until buying this bike in the fall of 2018.
Our initial idea was we would ride about 65 miles a day, with one day off a week and take about 7 weeks to cover 3100 miles from Pacific to Atlantic. We figured we’d carry about 20 pounds of gear each. At first eager to see if I could handle a loaded bike, I borrowed Ken’s panniers (saddlebags) and loaded each side with a 10-pound dumbbell and rode 20 to 30 miles with this total of 20 pounds. It turned out I was the dumbbell! That wasn’t such a great idea as my knee started to ache and I had set out too ambitiously. Dialing it back, after some rest I started riding with just 2 pounds per side (4 total) a few times per week and would increase my distance each ride. Every 2 weeks or so I’d add a pound per side. Now since I didn’t have a supply of one-pound weights, this meant adding various canned foods – beans, chick peas, etc.
By late May, we did a 5-day test run or shakedown ride as it’s known. We cycled loaded with all the gear we planned to bring and our bags weighed in about 16 pounds. We rode from Larchmont to New Milford, CT (63 miles); to Stockbridge, MA in the Berkshires (74); to Amherst, MA (59); to Goshen, CT in Litchfield County (82) to Norwalk, CT (64) where we took the train home. We were assessing our cycling abilities climbing with weighted paniers loaded up on our bikes as well as checking out staying with strangers through the group called Warm Showers. (https://www.warmshowers.org/) Thank you to Tom & Cece our first Warm Showers hosts who initiated us into this wonderful community of strangers hosting strangers who show up on a bike and without pay. The medium of exchange is conversation and learning about one another. They gave us entry to their home and full run of the place even 2 hours before they came home from work- what trust! Thank you to our other equally wonderful WS hosts on that trip Julie & Roger in Amherst and Jay & Haydee in Goshen. The latter were actually not even WS hosts but we were connected to them through WS host Christian in Litchfield who could not accommodate us as he was away but arranged for us to stay with his friends instead of a hotel. And thank you to our friends Cheryl & David who hosted and entertained us and confirmed we were nuts for attempting this but onto a great adventure.
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WS Hosts Julie & Roger In Amherst, May 2021
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The test run proved we could do this for a week- but what about 7 weeks?
Since I started using the Strava APP on March 30,2021, I have recorded 69 rides of about 221 hours covering 2,664 miles and climbing 151,686 feet in elevation gain. That does not include the many rides unrecorded in early March and some since, plus the many hours on the stationary bike when too cold or rainy outdoors or I needed to catch up on my reading so I chose to multi-task indoor “ride and read”. Since I have not cycled in the rain in training and Heather has – we shall see if me choosing to be a fair-weather rider hurts me. I did finally realize I needed to buy a cycling rain jacket a week ago:)
In addition to gratitude expressed above, others helped get us to the “starting line”. Thank you to the great people at bike shops: Larchmont 10538 (Andrew, Adrien & Joelle) and Danny’s Bikes (Ed, Charlie & crew); and to one of my riding partners – Kevin for his stoic advice! Thanks as well to industry colleague Tom who runs a cross country cycling trip for his advice including emphasizing traveling as light as possible. In his words: “I’m not saying cut out the tags of your tee-shirts, but as light as you possibly can!” Well Tom- I have been cutting clothing tags and have been weighing various items on my postal scale to try and shave off precious ounces. I have become a “weight weenie” as the term is used in the cycling world.
Lastly thanks to our 3 kids Sydney, Jamie and Matt who are enthusiastically supporting us in pursuing our passion and goal. They have already taught us one lesson- they are worried about us and want to make sure we are okay daily! It’s so nice to have that role reversal and see how much they care. Huge thanks to Syd for managing the technical side of this blog allowing me to send her emails and photos and she will drop it in! I could not do that from the road.
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| Camp Brause, May 2021 |
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| Stop at Holy Cow Ice Cream, May 2021 |
© Copyright Mark Segal 2021.
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