GETTING STARTED

A long, long time ago I began riding my bike with my friend Robert - that's me on the left. Of course Robert got the fancy chrome fenders AND the nice cowboy outfit that Christmas but those are stories for another day/blog. On this blog I'm going to try and 'blog' about my quest to ride in the 2015 RAGBRAI bike ride: how I got to where I am, what I'm doing to prepare for the ride and hopefully during the ride in July. 

A Little Background

RAGBRAI is the "Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa" and is one of the largest multi-day bike rides in the United States. According to RAGBRAI's General Information Page it started in 1973 as a ride with a few friends and has grown to a massive ride of about 10,000 riders.
I seem to remember reading about it either in high school or college and have always wanted to ride in it one day but as adulthood and all that entails came along the ride got shuffled further and further down my list (even before there were 'bucket lists'). In my early youth I enjoyed riding my bike through town, to the nearby pool with fiends and out in the country where my grandmother lived and I would occasionally wonder about what it would be like to ride in one of the big rides there were often written about in Sports Illustrated or shown on "Wild World of Sports" (...are you guessing my age yet?...) I never rode really fast or really far, I just rode to ride. While I was in college I bought a 'nice' road bike and that led to much longer rides and even more fun.
After college I tried to ride more and more and would occasionally ride to work but a brief encounter with a girl that lived in my apartment complex showed me that I really wasn't a rider - I went to ride with her one Saturday morning and she jumped on her pedals and flew away from me...It took everything I had to catch up (I think she slowed up) and ask "Why are you going so fast?" to which she replied "Why are you going so slow?" Over the many years subsequent to that enlightening moment I rode less and less but I always kept me bike nearby and would occasionally get it out for a ride through the countryside or on one of the bike trails being developed near where I was living. 
A few years ago I relocated to a college town in the south and met a few people who rode their bikes to the local bars, parks, town, etc and started riding my old hybrid with them. There is a nice trail here and I rode that as much as possible just for the fun of it too. In March of last year I attended an engineering society meeting where the presentation was by a guy who had ridden from San Diego to Tybee Island, GA over a period of about 17 days on a fully supported ride. The stories he told about that ride and the preparation necessary to go on it were extremely interesting BUT the most interesting thing to me was how I thought he looked like he was in really good shape to be in his mid-40's....someone asked him how old he was and his reply kind of shocked me - he was 55. That was the impetus for me to start riding again, although he had a big head start on me thanks to being an ex-runner I figured riding more and more would be a big help to me in trying to keep healthy as I aged. So I got out my 30+ year old road bike that weekend, pumped up the gumwall tires and went for a ride.

What's Next? 

I plan to continue this blog on a weekly basis and talk a little about how I've been riding since March, my plan and training schedule to ride in RAGBRAI and then do daily entries during the ride. I hope to encourage many of you to contribute (positively) through your comments and provide information and tips on how to ride better and get in better shape. I also hope to share information about various rides and places to ride that I've been doing and will be doing from now through July.
I'm looking forward to this new experience (blogging) and hearing from you. Thanks for taking the time to read all this - I promise that the next few entries won't be nearly as long ;)

James