This evening I went for a short drive and found my route for the morning ride.  It’s an eleven mile loop that starts and ends at my garage.  There are bike lanes for 95% of the route which will be nice but one section of the route is on a very busy road.  With the time I’ll be riding, though, I don’t plan on running into much traffic.  Another good thing is that there are sidewalks and streetlights for most of the route as well.  Another handy feature is that there are a couple of opportunities to extend the route for longer rides on the weekend.  It’s like this was made just for me.  Thank you city engineer for taking my future riding into consideration when you constructed this pristine loop.

Today is 16-Apr.  I plan on embarking on my journey to the new me on the morning of 21-Apr.

I’m sure you’re asking by now why I’ve decided to ride a bike to help me lose these 100 pounds. For me the reason was simple. Riding a bicycle is the only endurance sport that I’ve ever been any good at.

Running is out of the question. Ever since I can remember I’ve always had a difficult time running long distances. It always hurt my calves to run much further than a mile and it still does to this day. In high school the max distance I ran was the 200 meter sprint. My bread-and-butter was the opening leg of the 4×100 meter relay. I was fast out of the blocks and a very good sprinter over short distances. In the off-season we would run long distance just to build endurance and I hated it. Even after joining the military I never became accustomed to it. I attended Officer’s Candidate School (OCS) in the mid-90s and was forced to run long distance. I had to in order to graduate. Not to mention that those Marine Corps drill instructors were very motivating! Man I’ve got some stories! Anyway, I left OCS in the best shape of my life but that quickly deteriorated because of my lack of desire to run. About five years later I had to have surgery on my ankle to remove bone spurs and some floating bone fragments. Needless to say my dreams of becoming a long-distance ultra-marathoner were over. Seriously, that was never a dream of mine!

By now I’m sure you’ve had a chance to think about the title of the blog.  Biking To Live.  It means what it says.  Biking To Live.  I’ve undertaken a personal challenge to ride my bike in order to live again.  Why?  Because I need to.  Here’s why.

If you read my About Me page you’ll think that I’m your average guy with a job and family.  We have a good life and have been very fortunate.  What you can’t tell from my profile is that I have 100 things wrong with me.  Most people have traits others may not like but they are generally hidden and can only be experienced when you spend a great deal of time with them.  Call them idiosyncrasies.  I, on the other hand, wear my problem in public for everyone to see.  Many people have the same problem I do.  Too many.  What’s my problem?  I’m overweight to the tune of 100 pounds.