Post 2 - March 2018

I am a casual bike rider.  Five or ten miles is a typical ride and on occasion, my wife and I have completed 30-mile trails for a day of fun.  Biking Superior is going to be a much harder endurance test than a few casual days.  Being well aware of this fact, I have been conditioning for the event.

Now in a near vegetative state, the Midwest winter has taken its toll as usual, adding a few pounds here and there.  Following doctor’s orders, I have been doing my level best to speed recovery from a partial knee replacement a few months ago.  The routine established following professional PT consists of three to five miles walking daily and weight training 2 or 3 times each week.  For a Superior ride, I will need to step up my game – especially legs and core.

In mid-winter I was taking advantage of every thaw to get a few miles in before the next snow storm.  The threat of snow is gone, but the temperature is not yet inspiring.  Nonetheless, it is time to rip the band-aid off and start training in earnest. I know a 25-mile ride is not too difficult, but how about 25-mile rides on consecutive days?  Hey – it’s not the 80-mile days that I will be facing this summer around Superior but I have to start somewhere – right?

Until last month I was in a 40-year career as a commercial insurance broker. Sedentary doesn’t begin to describe the lethargic state of this profession. The first 20 years of my career included several physical challenges, among them a daily drive to lunch with a client often punctuated with two or three drinks.  We also had to get up from our desks, and actually leave an office (yep - four walls and a door were standard back in the day) in order to send or receive a fax.  The next 20 years were a recipe for poor health.  Although the 3-martini lunch was abandoned in favor of productivity, the P.C. became our ball and chain.  The only reason to leave your office now is a bio break or a meeting which, while probably unnecessary, at least provides a chance to use the last vestige of what remains of our lower limbs. The meeting also offers a rare respite from life affixed to screens.  If corporate America has its way, catheters are the next office accoutrement almost surely to be followed closely by feeding tubes.

I have abandoned the glamour of working in a high-rise office in the Chicago Loop and now intend to reverse the effects of a lifetime of idle sloth.  Out with the wing-tips and in with the Nike's.  Tomorrow is a new day indeed.