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OK, for real we’re doing some training now

March 18, 2012

Brice is putting something or other on the bikes right now and then we’re going on a little training ride. When people hear about our trip, they always say,

“Wow, you must be training a lot to get ready for that.”

“Um, no, actually, not at all.”

“Wait. What?”

And so it pretty much goes. The thing is, when you’re biking for 3 months straight, with no particular hard schedule to keep, the ride itself is its own training. If we take the first couple weeks pretty slowly — only 20 or 40 or so miles a day — we’ll get ourselves into it pretty nicely.

I think to some extent we feel a little guilty about that or something? Also maybe it’ll be nice to get some baseline level of cardiovascular not-dying-ness and butt callouses going. So we’ll see if we can manage a ride to Bethesda and back each day (for the record that’s about 6 miles total — yeah, pretty minimal, considering the 4,000-mile ride ahead of us). We’re not total couch potatoes as it is — we walk a couple miles a day — but we’d hardly be called athletes.

Don’t give me that raised eyebrow — this’ll be awesome!

2 Comments leave one →
  1. Becky Johnson's avatar
    Becky Johnson permalink
    March 18, 2012 2:09 pm

    Wishing you the best of luck. Are you going to have a little ‘gear’ trailer with you? Or everything on your backs? What about spare tires, lights, etc? We will be very interested in reading your blog..

  2. johnsosu's avatar
    johnsosu permalink*
    March 18, 2012 9:29 pm

    Thanks! We’ll each be carrying four panniers — 2 on the front rack, 2 on the back rack, plus some extra gear in a dry bag on top of the rear rack. So, no trailer. (Trailers add a lot of extra difficulty, due to the additional friction with the road.) We’ll be carrying spare parts with us, as you surmise–spare spokes, cleats, nuts/screws, tubes, etc.
    Hope you enjoy the blog!