i’m riding my bike to portland!
i don’t know how this happened, but i got suckered into doing STP - an annual event where 10,o00 people from all over the world lather on butt cream, put on spandex shorts, and hop on their bike for a 200 mile ride from seattle to portland.
it was never my intent to do anything remotely serious with cycling when i bought my first bike a few years ago — a hybrid road/mountain bike for a couple hundred bucks at target. generally speaking, i would go for maybe 10 miles per ride (15 if it was a really nice day, or if i had a lot of soul-searching to do). i would usually ride at night when there weren’t many cyclists out on the trails (the big groups that rode during the day were too intimidating), and i would usually ride because i wanted some quiet space to process dennis’s death. it was more for my spiritual/psychological health than for anything physical.
a couple months ago, my friend started bugging me about signing up for STP. every time i saw him, he’d try to get me to sign up, telling me how fun it would be, how it’d be an adventure. initially i refused — almost entirely because i didn’t think it was possible for me. 200 miles is really far. i was certain i didn’t have it in me. but he kept pushing. then i finally gave in. i didn’t come to any new conclusions, and nothing had really changed. i just simply caved.
i still see cycling as something i do for leisure. it’s just for fun, something i enjoy doing, something relaxing. but over the past couple years, the more time i spent on my bike, the more i wanted to know how far my body could take me. even when i was still riding my hybrid, my curiosity would grab me and i would wonder — could i do this ride a lil bit faster? could i ride out a lil bit farther? what am i capable of? the answers weren’t always great. i remember feeling so frustrated riding the burke-gilman and realizing my legs didn’t have anything left to offer. me, riding at a snail’s pace, huffing and puffing at the end of a ride. but every now and then, i’d do a lot better than expected.
we’ve done quite a few training rides now, and i’m doing much less huffing and puffing. in the middle of our last training ride i reflected on how far we had come and i realized that i couldn’t have possibly finished our last ride just a couple short months ago. with the big ride right around the corner, i’ve come to believe that finishing STP is entirely possible just in time. i have a feeling though that once we cross that finish line, there’s a chance i might not ever wanna see my bike again.
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go jeff!
vivien did stp a few years back when she took time off from work. i was so blown away and challenged to do it myself… but then she told me after doing it, she never wanted to ride her bike again!
any way, she’s slowly back to leisurely riding the burke gillman trail. so we’ll see, maybe in a few years we’ll ride stp together.
You’ll be fine. Just remember to ride conservatively and not get sucked in with far faster riders. If anything, you’ll feel better if you ride a little, easily the day after. Good shorts, good chamois cream, etc, you know the drill.
yeah, we’re gonna go at a pretty moderate pace and take regular breaks. our goal isn’t to make it down in a certain time — we just wanna make it down =)
george — vivian is a beast. i can’t believe she did it in regular shoes.
GREAT WOLF BABY! oh, and i’ll bring the chamois cream