A few years ago my friends Scott & Angela got me into cycling organization called “Adventure Cycling” which is mostly focused on touring and longer distance rides, very little racing or ‘exercise’, mostly just getting out and riding your bike. As part of that mission the organization sponsors and advocates for cycling routes all across the US and can provide maps of those routes and other support equipment necessary to ride. They also publish a print magazine called “Adventure Cyclist” which has articles about riding, equipment and other related ‘stuff’. A recent edition opened with the “Letter from the Editor” story about how the Editor in Chief had checked his total biking miles for 2020 and was very surprised that, despite the pandemic and its ramifications on socialization, he managed to ride more miles in 2020 than he had ridden in previous years. I think he said that he rode more miles last year than any other year in his adult life. I found that to be very interesting and so I checked into my Strava account to see what I had ridden for last year.
Strava is a program (I deplore the abbreviation “app” in both cyberspace and restaurants as I feel it is lazy) that gives you all sorts of tools to track your riding (running, swimming, hiking, any kind of activity) by miles, feet of elevation, hours, etc. It’s fairly widely used and allows for you to share your rides with others on the program along with keeps track of your activities over time. Well, according to Strava, I rode at least 81 rides covering 2,426 miles on my bikes in 2020. I say ‘at least’ because I don’t always use Strava when I’m riding around town, just when I’m going to be out for 15+ miles or so. And it turns out that those 2,400+ miles are more miles that I’ve ridden in a year since 2016 when I rode 2,900+ miles in a couple of cross state rides and a lot of three day rides. And I did all of these 2020 miles without the benefit of any organized multi-day rides and only a small number of single day rides like the Tour de Elvis in lovely Albemarle, NC. Also, 81 rides is the most number of rides I’ve done in any year since I started riding and that is even more amazing given the lack of organized rides.
So just like the editor of Adventure Cyclist I’m pleasantly surprised at how riding my bike was more than just a normalcy in the Year of COVID but was actually a high point! While I. and many of my cycling friends, constantly lamented the cancellation of any trips that we wanted to go on I was quietly getting out on my bike 2, sometimes 3, times a week and riding with a core group of friends. We did struggle with COVID protocols at first – learning how to keep our distance from each other, keeping the group small, etc but once we got in stride with a fairly secure and steady bubble of friends we rode quite a bit. And even now we are still struggling with COVID protocols so we can ride as a group but we are doing it, at least when it’s warm enough for my old bones. Granted we have missed the opportunities for post ride meals & beers and general socialization, but we apparently offset that with more rides than usual. We are off to a strong start in 2021!! Looking back through 2020 it’s a wonder to see how I kept my sanity but now that I see how many times I rode and how many miles I covered I realize that my bike was a key component to beating the “COVID Blues”.
So the moral of this story is twofold I suppose…. Always surprise yourself and never stop riding, you’ll find the road, while it may go in circles like last year, never ends. Until next time, keep riding.
