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| Chalk art in the tunnel beneath Yates Store Road on the ATT. |
As I wrote it, I thought, who am I kidding? And, if I did exercise, I was imaging it would mostly be in an air-conditioned gym on a treadmill. I recall that summer biking from Herndon Park to O'Kelly Chapel Road and back. This is a four mile round trip and I had to push my bike on the last quarter mile. I was drenched in sweat and wondering just how anyone could enjoy biking in the summer. Nor did it seem like biking in winter would be any fun, and of course it rains all spring. Maybe biking was something I might do a few times a year during four or five nice weeks in the fall.
The one problem with gym treadmills was that Cheryl had introduced me to an app called Endomondo that tracks exercise via GPS. You actually have to be outside moving for the exercise to count. And, on a treadmill, it's really easy to stop after ten or twenty minutes. Outside, if you walk a mile up a trail, you've got to turn around a walk a mile back. You can't stop just because you feel like stopping. By March of 2013, I managed to log 57 miles of walking in a month!
In April of 2013, Cheryl and I got back on our bikes. We only did one ride that month, but it was 13.4 miles, all the way from Herndon Park to the White Oak Trail Head and back. And we did it in under 2 hours! In May, we did more rides, including one that was 24 miles, an unbelievable distance only a year before.
We kept biking similar distances through the summer. We slacked off once winter arrived, but I was turning fifty March 2, 2014 and wondered: Could I ride a full 50 miles on my 50th birthday? Yes. Totally. It was a real test of will around mile 30, when my butt was sore from sitting so long on my bike, my hands were getting numb, and my legs were getting rubbery. But doing this ride was a breakthrough. I think, until this point, biking had been exercise. But, once you discover you can sit on a bike for six hours of forward motion, the world opens up, and biking becomes a way of exploring the world.
We started travelling, riding trails throughout NC, in Virginia, SC, Maryland, West Virginia, Tennessee, Louisiana and Kentucky. We've got Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi on our to do list, and are eyeing trails in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York. One day we want to ride every open segment of the Great American Rail Trail. Biking isn't a chore. It's not even a habit. It's part of our life and our identity now.
The things I thought of as barriers to biking have transitioned into rewards. We bike year round. The 90 degree heat of North Carolina summers doesn't imprison us on our couches. Once you're sweating, as long as you keep moving forward on a bike, you've got natural air conditioning. You don't really feel the heat until you stop for a break. Hydrate, wear sunscreen, and push on. If we're really lucky, we might get rained on. Riding through cool rain on a hot July afternoon is simply marvelous.
Each year, we've pushed a little further than the year before. Even when Cheryl dealt with cancer, then knee surgery, she always managed to bike a bit more as she recovered. A few years ago, we managed to to cover 300 miles in a single month! Last year, I was able to average 200 miles a month to reach 2400 miles logged for the year. I mean, it would be hard to top that, right? What was I going to do? Start biking 400 miles a month? 500? I spent most weekends at comic book conventions, selling my books. There were practical limits to how much time I could spend on a bike, right?
Then Covid-19 shut down conventions and opened up my weekends. At the beginning of June, I thought, this is it. I'm going to log 500 miles this month. I didn't make it. I know I said a few paragraphs back that it's pleasant to ride in summer rain, but that's only true if you're already biking when the rain hits. Starting out in the rain is something only crazy people do. And it rained a lot in June in the evening hours when Cheryl was getting off work, thwarting ride after ride. So, I only made it to 400 miles that month, which was still a record I was proud of.
I really didn't even try for 500 in July. Despite saying that heat isn't a reason to stay off your bike, mid-afternoons in July in NC are brutal. You can still grab miles in the morning, and we did some after dark rides vial flashlight to beat the heat and lot 379 miles, which is the second longest distance I've ridden in a month.
Then came August. Ever since I've lived in North Carolina, if we're going to have a truly unbearable heat wave with days topping out above 100 degrees, it's going to hit in August. But, this August we lucked out. It was hot and muggy, but most days topped out near 90, which, on a shady trail like the ATT, is perfectly fine biking weather. I got off to a good start, logging almost 200 miles in the first ten days of the month. Reaching 500 was in my grasp if the weather held out.
It held out. Cheryl had taken off Monday, August 24 with the goal that we would attempt a century ride that day, which is 100 miles. The weather was glorious. It rained most of the morning, a light drizzle that kept us cool and kept other riders off the trail. We finished with a little daylight left, and me just shy of my 500 mile goal. And I still had a week left to ride!
So, I rode. Could I make it to 600? Sure. That's where I was sitting yesterday, as I met Cheryl after work. Remember how I said only crazy people would begin their ride in the rain, especially if there was thunder? It was raining when we started our ride, and raining when we finished, and for the miles where we weren't actively rained on, we were staring at ugly, ugly storm clouds churning on the horizon. Our phones started blaring weather alerts warning us of flash-floods. We slogged on. Cheryl knew that at the end of the ride, she'd be at 550 miles for the month, and wanted that 50 mile milestone. Never underestimate the power of a pleasing number for motivation.
I was also aiming for a nice round number. I rolled into the parking lot having covered slightly more than 621 miles in a single month. 621 might not strike the average person as a round number, but for the nerds among you, you no doubt instantly translated that into 1000 kilometers.
As I was riding uphill yesterday toward Herndon Park in the driving rain, I was thinking a lot about the ride in 2012 where I'd needed to push my bike up that same hill. I was eight years older on this ride, but felt twenty years younger. I'd gone from August spent sitting on a couch to an August where I spent over 70 hours sitting on a bike.
I'm so, so unbelievably grateful to 2012 James Maxey and his four mile ride. I owe a great debt to the James Maxey who walked 57 miles in March 2013. Those were the first steps on the journey to my current self. Hopefully, 2028 James Maxey will look back on the person I am now and see my 1000k month as the beginning of an even grander adventure.
Of course, I haven't made this journey alone. One big reason, probably the main reason, that I've kept moving forward is because of Cheryl. She's had far more serious health struggles than I've dealt with, and shown a level of grit that I suspect surprises even her. If anything, she's even more obsessed with pushing us a little further than I am. I tend to get in more miles than she does, but I work from home and she still has a full time job. When I see her cover 550 miles in a month while working full time, I can't help but think if she had an extra 40 hours a week she'd probably have us aiming for 1000 miles in a month. Last night, when she pulled into the parking lot where we met after work, rain was spattering her windshield. We huddled over over her phone, looking at the weather radar. Dark red storm cells danced all around us, but a thin band of light green rain covered the first three or four miles the trail we'd ride. Maybe the weather would clear as we rode? Or, maybe it would get worse. We'd both already gone well past our original monthly goal of 500 miles. If we skipped biking and went and celebrated our great month with some well earned pizza, no one would blame us.
Cheryl got out of her car, unloaded her bike and together we rode toward the storm, already soaked, feeling a little crazy, and grinning ear to ear.
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