What began as my hint to Santa for new wheels morphed into our 2014 project. What would it take to get me to commit to riding faster and a lot more miles? (I can be easily bribed. I have no shame about this.) 2013 had introduced us to real people who participated in randonneuring events. We'd never had a chance to spend time with any randonneurs before. We discovered we were rather intrigued by the whole randonneuring thing. Yeah, randonneurs are crazy, but they're affable, likable crazies. We may not be able to keep up with any of them for a while, but we won't know exactly what we can do till we try.
We put the last entry in the 2013 biking spreadsheet. After taking a few minutes to admire the numbers, the file was tidied up and archived. We didn't bike much the first 5 months of the year what with the move to Miami and all. But beginning in May the mileage each month crept upward. In December, we rode over 1000 miles. Our down-the-road speed (the speed we can do for hour after hour) had increased to 18-19 mph, too.
We'd successfully negotiated a suitable bribe for me. I would commit to getting a little faster and riding lots and lots of miles in 2014. (For those of you who may not be fluent in cycling husband lingo, "commit" means "making something your first priority: no whining, no belly aching, no quitting.")
The 2014 biking spreadsheets are ready, empty cells waiting to be filled.
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| Our Sunday ride group reflected in the street windows of a high-rise building downtown. |
