As we get ready to drop out of our normal lives for a year
there have been a million little details to attend to. Professional organizations need
dealing with, insurance companies need reassurance, renters need to be found
and all the other minutiae of every day life need adjusting. Reality is being obstructive and
bureaucratic.
I think it is
separation anxiety.
There is one ugly thing that keeps breathing fetid air down
my neck, waking me up in the night and whispering evil in my ears when I am not
occupied. Training. If we are to ride across Canada, the
second largest country in the world, we need to do some training. We have
dozens of books on how to train for long distance rides. All we need to do now is read
them and follow the instructions.
Somehow, I don’t think we are going to get in shape by osmosis.
People say that wearing black is slimming. Well, I have been wearing black
for months now and I have not lost 1 gram of fat. So, I guess training has to be done the old fashioned
way – work!
Telen is going to be just fine. She is a very fit, slender Asian woman with tremendous
drive and lung capacity.
With her small frame and high power-to-weight ratio she disappears down
the road like the Roadrunner spotting Wile E Coyote. That is one of the reasons I refuse to let her get a
horn for her bike.
I am in shape.
Round is a shape, right?
There always seems to be a good reason for me not to train. Snow, freezing rain, hurricanes,
riots, civil unrest etc. etc. I’m
sure those are happening somewhere in the world.
Don’t get me wrong. I love riding my bike. It is one of the things I love doing the most. Training
on my bike, well, that is a different story. That requires work, concentration, following a
schedule and all those other unpleasant things. Eddy Merckx,
arguably the best cyclist the world has ever seen, said that the best training
for cycling was to “Ride your bike, ride your bike, and ride your bike.” So, not to gainsay the great Eddy
Merckx, I guess I better get out and “Ride my bike”
We have ridden our bikes in Italy, France, Ireland, China,
the USA and, of course, here in Canada. Most of those places were great places to ride. China, on the other hand, was just plain
terrifying and the USA was puzzling.
Those rides were holidays that lasted only a couple of weeks. The bike ride across Canada will
be almost 3 months long with a few mountain ranges thrown in.
Can a little fat man do this?
I guess we will
find out!
