At age 66, anytime I don't feel like riding I think of all my pals who either due to obesity or some disease, can't ride or in some cases even walk by themselves, and that gives me the incentive to get off my lazy, slightly saggy butt, and get out and peddle. last week I was on a trail in SE MN and met some folks who are older than I am and who were putting on 60 mile days. We are all built differently because my idea of a big day is 25 miles and here these folks in their 70's were, happily cranking along at over 2 times that. One of them was just breaking in a new, "Go faster" $3,000.00 bike (he's a geezer so he bought it on sale for much less than that of course
) but he was going to put on 60 plus miles that day and was having the time of his life. He's done a double century ride in the last 2 years!!! Me, my longest ever was 65 miles and I'm proud of that and hope to this year get in an 80 miler before the snow flies. I figure riding puts money into my "Health Bank" and so far that has proven to be true because except for being slightly overweight, my health is great and I can pretty much do what I want and I attribute that to my remaining active like I am with biking. So far this year I have managed to put on 1200 miles and ride a pretty clunky, Hi-bred type Raleigh Passage 4.0 because due to back problems I cannot ride hunched over forward. I don't think it matters what you ride as long as you ride and I've found that once you get over 50 it doesn't matter what you look like either because I've learned you cannot judge what kind of a bike rider someone is by their body build. The double century guy I mentioned earlier had little skinny chicken looking legs, hardly any butt and a barrel belly and on the trail he passed me easily and I was cruising along at 14 MPH at the time and that's cranking along pretty good on the flats. In closing, biking's fun, biking's good for you, and when in doubt about going out think about how you'd feel if you couldn't go. If that doesn't get you off the couch, then nothing will.
Rocky1405