(no subject)

[stormdog]

After getting home from a bike ride yesterday, I blocked three people who left a laugh react on Facebook to a picture of me I posted publicly some time ago: one of me shortly after getting my hair done at the salon. I changed it to friends only, but I suppose my picture is probably out there getting passed around somewhere anyway. It's the second time something like this has happened, and I don't really have strong feelings about it that I'm conscious of. But I suspect they may be there anyway.

On one of my rides to the lake, I was passed by two women in jerseys riding together and it made me think of watching Long Riders! and what it would be like to have friends and/or partners to ride with. It made me feel lonely, though the ride was really nice.

Speaking of Long Riders!, Miriam jokes that watching the show was a bad influence on me, and she may have a point. I have discovered a group that organizes brevet rides in Saskatchewan and I want to do one next year. Brevets are a sort of combination race/touring bicycling event. There's a set route and checkpoints, and you have a set amount of time to finish in, but it's explicitly non-competitive.

The shortest ones are 200k with a route from Regina to Fort Qu'appelle, to Southey, to Regina and they have a 13.5 hour time limit. I'm going to aim for one or more of them after the winter. I used to be in physical shape good enough that that distance felt approachable, and I'd like to get there again.

(In case you're curious, the longest ones are 1000km and you have 75 hours to finish.)

And I found a stepstool in the dumpster a couple days ago, so my days of standing on stacked up paint cans or rolling chairs are over! For now anyway...

Comments

Regina > Fort Qu'appelle > Southey > Regina

[dewline]

Seeing that kind of distance described as "short" always surprises me. Then again, I always rode in a car or on a bus. I never tried cycling the distance.

Re: Regina > Fort Qu'appelle > Southey > Regina

[stormdog]

Even more most cyclists, those distances are long. 200km is the shortest official brevet, but that doesn't make it short. Some people talk about these events as the bicycle equivalent of ultra-marathons for runners, though honestly I don't think I will ever be able, or interested, in doing long-distance running. I think you probably need to be in better overall physical shape to run a marathon than ride 200k by bike. Biking, though, is really appealing.