indyfabz

Thanks.

What I didn’t mention is that many of the kids sounded only semi-literate in their letters. One boy’s letter was virtually incomprehensible. A notable exception was one girl. She was head and shoulders above the rest.

phughes

I can believe it. I used to do school shows. I still have envelopes full of thank you letters from various schools. I really appreciated them, and yes, some were almost indecipherable, of course depending on the grade, their individual levels, and learning disabilities.

canalligators

I get the old, “Oh I could never do that!” Therefore they can’t.

The other day, I told someone that I’d made a tote bag for a folding chair. Just about the simplest sewing job. He was amazed that I could do that. I didn’t bother telling him that I’d made panniers, or that my 12 y.o. granddaughter can whip up a ditty bag.

But we all have our gifts. I can’t dance or dress myself.

Koyote

FWIW, I actually am a Koyote.

That was a cool story.

I've got a friend who's a retired cop. He used to do the department PR -- which included visiting schools and talking to classes. On one such visit, when the elementary school kids were asking him questions about the stuff on his belt, one kid asked "What's in that pouch?" So my friend pulled out the handcuffs and showed them to the kids. Then another kid said, "Oh, yeah, my mom and dad have some of those. They keep them in their bedroom."

genejockey 

This you?

Koyote

That's not me, but I do love me some Roadrunner Fricassee.

Eric F 

I got those comments a lot by random people watching my daughter hit softballs while she was in HS. She was blessed with strength and power, and improved it with gym work, plus she spent a LOT of time working on her skills under the guidance of a very good instructor. At the age of 16, she had hitting power on the level of elite college players. "I could never do that!"...Well, maybe you could. You just have to put in the same dedicated hard work, over MANY years, starting from a young age. Same as the rest of the players who can hit like that.

terrymorse 

Those King of the Mountains centuries were great fun (my pace in parentheses):

• Mulholland Challenge (15.6 mph)
• Breathless Agony (16.3 mph)
• Heartbreak Hundred (17.3 mph)

I don't remember precisely, but I think I was consistently about 15% slower than the fastest rider.

Carbonfiberboy 

I've had a different life and different experiences. I didn't start what might broadly be called "competitive cycling," meaning in my case competitive group rides, until I was about 55. So your age is just when I was starting to get strong and kept getting stronger until my early 60s. Which absolutely does not mean that I wouldn't have been stronger had I started at 40, but that's not what happened. I was too immersed in career then. So yes, it still applies. I'm 77 now and am starting a new training method to overcome a weakness I've developed, and it's working. It's definitely necessary to change one's training emphases as one ages. One's body changes and one's response to training changes.

At your age, one of the things that worked for me was hitting the gym hard twice a week, one of those times after a spin class, and doing sets of 30 to failure. Did that for a couple of years, made a huge difference, after which I started more normal strength training programs. Also started supplementing with whey protein, which also worked. There's a way around almost every obstacle, one just needs to look for the route and the route is going to change with age.

One of the things which changes is the rate of decay of one's ability. The most important thing is to keep at it. I take one month a year to do other stuff like long backpacking trips, do a little running and maybe only a couple rides a week. My experience is that getting it back takes 3 times as long as the period you took off, so watch that. When training, only 1 zero day in a row. It makes sense to take a month mostly off in the fall. That keeps one from getting overtraining syndrome and one needs to start off with a lot of moderate intensity hours anyway. Getting detrained a good bit is a nice wake-up call. I once took a winter off in my early 60s and didn't get it back until the next fall. My whole summer of wonderful rides were not what they could have been.

No, you probably won't be able to do what you did when you were younger, but if that's going to be a problem for you, it's going to be a long tough life. Get over it and get back to having fun. I don't ski black mogul runs anymore, but I still ski as hard as I can and it's still fun. Fred Beckey was still having fun rock climbing at 86.

big john

I don't remember my times, but I was consistently near the slow end of all riders, except the Heartbreak when I had a good day. Plus, I had done that route many times and knew what to expect.

Our club has the route on our schedule for the 29th of this month. No support, and we don't know about the water crossings yet. I don't know if it's happening for certain. I'll probably wuss out.

VegasJen

Nope. Just making a statement.
Thanks. Whether the guy rode the entire 7+ hours or just did a couple legs with some breaks in between, fact is, he was out there getting it. Good for him.
I get where you're coming from, although a slightly different take. My community is small and an older demographic, but we do have a public pool. Since I do triathlon, I go to the pool in the summer to get some training in (southern Nevada is pretty sparse on the natural water sources). I've been trying to learn ways to make myself faster and whenever I'm there, I'm training. One day last summer one of the regulars, a little older than me, came up and said, "you're really fast. Do you swim competitively?" I demurred. I guess you could say it's "competitive", but the fact is I'm always in the back half of the pack. Sometimes, even in the back of the balk half.

VegasJen

Thanks. I'm surprised at how eager some people are to nit pick just the most trivial things. It's almost like they go out of their way to find stupid stuff to argue about.
Funny you say that. I was talking to some of the kids in my class (I call them kids because I'm old enough to be their mom) about some of my training rides. These are kids in their 20s and they're saying they couldn't do a 20 mile bike ride, much less 30. I'm thinking, "you're a kid! When I was that age, I could have done 20 miles, stopped for a Whopper, done a couple laps in the pool and then played a nice game of softball to unwind for the day." Kids today.
It's not the middle of nowhere. We have a lot of nowhere in Nevada. Fortunately, I'm a lot closer to somewhere than nowhere. But I've been to nowhere. I know because you have to drive through nowhere to get to somewhere.

VegasJen

Got me! Ya, "PahrumpJen" just doesn't have a ring to it. Besides, I say Pahrump and 99% of the population would as "what or where the hell is Pahrump?" Hence, Vegas.
Why the hell do you think I got out of Vegas? Still close though. Close enough to visit, too far for the crazies to come to me though. I like that.

veganbikes

Yeah, that me...though to be completely fair and honest we were doing the 4 Yorkshiremen bit from Monty Python:

If you don't want to watch the video for some odd reason it is basically 4 guy from Yorkshire out doing themselves on how terrible they had it growing up while drinking Chateau d' Chasolet (SP) I say it a lot but it is one of their funniest sketches but there is a large population that somehow just doesn't get it and it is sad. They are missing out on some of the finest comedic minds in one setting.

rsbob 

It’s very common with people with poor self-esteem trying to make themselves feel better. Unfortunately that strategy only results in temporary satisfaction, since it is no substitute for having a good sense of self, so they have to repeat it over and over again. Its very similar to school yard bullies. Usually it comes from their upbringing and how they were treated as children. Now you know.

prj71

Century = 6 hours for me but that's without stopping. With breaks 7 to 7-1/2 hours.

seypat

It's pretty depressing. Not as depressing as The Road though.

seypat

Put a rider that's a slow, mediocre climber on a climbing century and they'll be out there all day. Ask me how I know.

seypat

Since you asked, I'm a 5'8"ish 200lbish fast twitcher. Most likely one of, if not the slowest climber on the forums that's not obese or has some kind of medical condition. I do the 75 or 100 route of this ride every year because I can. Most of the day is spent going nowhere slow. I'm a great descender however. I'll miss it this year because of a wedding

https://www.ymcacva.org/ride

https://ridewithgps.com/routes/29030456

Bald Paul

Ooops, sorry, I thought this was a discussion about the Dubai call girls I keeps seeing here now and then.

phughes

Don't ask.

VegasJen

Well, hey, if you want to post up some videos of The Clash or Sex Pistols, I'm not stopping you.

Eric F 

I'm not sure either of those would be considered "hardcore".

terrymorse 

7 hours to do a century sounds about right if it has a lot of vertical (> 10,000 feet). Not counting breaks.

VegasJen

Hardcore enough for me. I liked some Clash and Billy Idol back in the day, but have to admit I'm more of a plain Jane bubblegum pop girl.