I soon met some “real” cyclists and started riding and training with them. I entered my first USCF (ABLA at that time) race when I was 13, and raced on the road and track for ten years. After that, things like marriage, parenthood, and career came first, but I kept riding as often and as hard as I could until two years ago.

My downfall was overuse injuries. From age 17 on, I was almost always either injured or on the verge of it, and I was too passionate about the sport to rest and let things heal fully. That all caught up with me a couple years ago. I won’t go into the details, but the upshot is that at 60 I’ve all but given up cycling.

To my own surprise, I no longer miss it all that much. Maybe I could have kept riding longer by riding more “sensibly”, but instead I did it passionately, extravagantly, foolishly – and I have no regrets because (cue violins) I did it my way.

And I’ve found other methods for staying fit. None of them inspires me to the kinds of efforts that cycling did, but that’s probably a good thing because I finally can exercise sensibly and maybe even have a shot (knock on wood) at staying injury-free. Life goes on…

take away the bike and you gain:
- peevishness
- weight
- sulkitude

i’d rather have the patience, strength, and purpose. they keep the peevishness, weight and sulkitude at bay

It took almost 2 months for my thyroid to get back down to normal after I went on meds. I sent an email to Karen Smyers — a very successful pro tri-athlete who had her thyroid removed due to cancer — and returned to competition. She graciously took the time to email me back with words of encouragement, which really meant a lot to me. During that two months, I put away my Felt B2 with the aerobars and would go for 5 mile rides through my neighborhood or on the local bike path. This experience really showed me how much I had been taking biking and the ability to active totally for granted. Like Fatty described, there was a pretty big hole in my life across multiple dimensions. Those short rides up and down the Olentangy river really changed my perspective.

Since then, I’ve done IMLP and Mohican 100 MTB. If biking were taken away permanently, would I be less me? I don’t know, but I know from my short experience, I would be pretty sad. On the other hand, I think I enjoy each ride just a tiny bit more because of my brief experience.

I’ll concede your premise that there is an I for the sake of discussing things to be thankful for Fatty.

Bicycling has been with me for 35 of my 39 years. I truly believe Mountain Biking exists in a rare and ephemeral strand of activities that combine the endurance and physical fitness derived from the ascent with the adrenaline and death defyingly(not a word) necessary attention to the present moment of the descent.

For this I am truly grateful.

Think of other activities that lies in bicycling’s special place.
Snowboarding? descent/yes, ascent/nope.
Hiking? descent/nah, ascent/maybe if you walk fast.
Running!!? descent/nine, ascent/who runs up hills?

Where were we? oh yes bicycling…