That experience gave me a tiny taste of the complete rush that cycling can give you. When my dad caught up to me, he started laughing. All I saw was the pavement flying by under my wheels. I passed him and flew up the hill, hardly feeling the incline. I had been drafting behind him up the hill, but all of a sudden I realized I had more. One day my dad and I were out riding and were going up a modest climb, but it was near the end of our ride and I could feel the lactic acid building up. I’d wonder how they could increase their speed over and over again going uphill. I remember we’d watch the Tour after we got home from our bike rides and I’d marvel at how the riders could attack, or accelerate ahead of the group, on some of the largest mountains in France. Did we go faster? What was our average MPH? How many miles did we get in today? Sometimes my sister would go with us too, but she generally favored sleep over a 10 mile ride at 7 am. At the end of each ride, my dad would compare our statistics to the day before. We’d draft off each other on the flats and suffer through the long uphill climbs that never seemed quite so bad when we were driving in the car. I’d drag myself out of bed, put on something spandex, strap on my clip-in shoes and grab a banana to stick in my jersey pocket. We’d ride in the early morning before the bugs got bad and the humidity became too oppressive. When I was in high school, each summer my dad and I would go on “training rides” in the rural hills around our home in Virginia with the intent of us doing a fast century (100 mile) two-day ride someday. Turns out, they were sort of right, but in a way that maybe no one imagined…or more likely, that no one wanted to admit. I knew all the best phrases that Paul Sherwin and Phil Liggett (the Tour de France commentators) used when they got excited.
And then next summer, we’d ask: Can he do it yet again? We discussed his rivals in detail-their pros and cons. Of course, we were watching to see if Lance Armstrong could win again. When we vacationed in Nova Scotia and stayed in a cabin on the lake that didn’t have cable, my grandma recorded each stage for us and we jerry-rigged a VCR (!) up to a small TV and huddled around to watch. We started watching the Tour de France as a family when I was still very young, but it didn’t start to really interest me until I was in high school.
We each had our own special mountain bikes…Treks for everyone! They let us buy helmets and gloves that matched our bikes too. There was no city too big or any ride too long. He taught my sister and I to ride bikes when we were young and it turned into a family hobby-long bike rides to all sorts of places. He even raced in some small races when he was younger. I bought it the day it came out and have spent every spare moment reading it since.Ī little background: my dad is a huge cycling fan.
I knew I would have to read this book after I saw this article (.
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