I was the kid in 8th and 9th grade that talked non-stop about bicycles. I had 3 speeds until I was in 9th grade, had to buy it with my paper route money. A year later saved up and bought a 10 speed this was 1972. Some of my friends had really nice road bikes and one even had a track bike. I took my bike to college in 1976, West Virginia and the hills were too much so I dismounted for about 10 years.
Got the urge to ride again in 1986 so I bought my Nishiki Olympic 12 and rode that semi-seriously for about 6 years, did a half dozen half centuries a year. At that point my son was little and taking up a lot of time. So again stopped riding about 1992. When I finally started exercising again it was first in a gym then martial arts, I do have a Black Belt, did that for 8 years then stopped exercising. So I was off the bicycle for 25 years until late 2018 when I got the urge once again. It wasn't until about June of 2019 that I started thinking about getting more involved, I did an organized ride of about 36 hilly miles and got smoked bad. Then I got sick right when I was getting the motors humming but held onto the idea that I should get on the bike more. Basically I needed to tone up and lose a little bit of gut but I weighed only about 155 at that time.
A friend of mine who was over 300 pounds had a gastric band and lost about 125 pounds was riding a bike so that got me into a friendly competition. July of 2019 I did a metric + century charity ride with this guy, wasn't really prepared but still average speed 13.9 mph, took 4 hours 49 minutes of seat time plus almost an hour at rest stops. As mentioned I was sick for a few months last year but once I got the green light to ride it was winter. My best option at that point was a trainer and Zwift. People laugh at Zwift but for me it was a life changer. I set the goal of getting first the Tron and then completing all available routes in game. Did all that and more. When the weather got nice I hit the (very hilly) roads here and had just the greatest time in spite of the virus thing.
The metric charity ride (actually 65 miles) I did last year was cancelled this year but had it been held my goal was to complete the ride in less than 4 hours with no stops. Planning of doing it next summer and I've set my goals to ride in 3.5 hours no stops. That is what really keeps me motivated. I'm a stronger and better rider today than in any other time of my life.