Elaine and I on the SLO Wildflower Century in 2011
Once, long ago, I was a big fan of event rides. I did them regularly. There was one event ride year after year I used to go on that lasted a week. I was away from my wife and my family for a week, the ride was hard, I was riding alone and I finally realized, after doing this six times in eight years, I was not having much fun anymore.
Normally, even when I am riding alone, I am having fun while riding. So, that was not it. It’s not the rides; I changed.
Preparing for these rides meant I had to train for them. I had to ride my bike to train. After pondering the whole thing, I realized that cycling had become like work. When cycling became something I had to do, that took a lot of the fun out of it for me. It was like, well, work. I want to ride my bike because I want to ride my bike, not because I have to ride my bike.
The one great exception to this was the 2011 SLO Wildflower that I rode with Elaine Whitebook. We rode at the slowest riders pace and when one of us got tired we grabbed a SAG. That was spending a day with a friend on a bike ride. It was one of the best bike rides ever. Oh yea, we did not train for the ride. We just did it.
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