Nobody likes Bicycle Guy.

Bicycle Guy owns a yoga studio full of tights. His bike weighs less than your shoes. For some reason, he needs cleats to pedal. His seat (which he insists on calling a “saddle”) is half a cheek wide and costs three times more than your office chair. He chooses to ignore perfectly good bike paths so he can clog up traffic in the street.

He is the most obnoxious person in the world.

Last Saturday, I found myself surrounded by Bicycle Guy. That’s because I decided to participate in the Cleveland Clinic’s “VeloSano,” a bike race created to raise money for cancer research.

I did not blend in.

In a sea of spandex, my basketball shorts and borrowed 25-year-old Huffy made me pretty easy to spot. But by the day of the race, I no longer cared about blending in — I just wanted to get the ride over with. I had already tried a practice run a few weeks earlier, and things didn’t go great.

Here are a few of the lessons I learned during my only training run:

48 miles is pretty far, even on a bike

I blame the VeloSano people for this one. They give you the option of a 230-mile race, 173 miles, 100 miles, 62 miles, 48 miles and 25 miles. The 25-mile race is “perfect or families and novice riders.” I’m not an infant, so there was no way I was going to choose 25 miles. I’m also not an idiot, so I know that 100 miles is really far. Forty-eight miles was a good compromise. Compared to 230 miles, 48 seemed like it would be cake.

Twenty miles into my practice run, I learned that 48 miles is not cake.

The human body needs food and water

I should probably blame myself for this one. I thought that it would be OK to try a 40-mile bike ride on a bowl of cereal and a couple extra gulps of orange juice. I carried zero water with me. I did this because my wife was still asleep when I left the house, and I am, in fact, an idiot.

Twenty miles into my practice run, I learned that a bowl of cereal provides enough energy for approximately 20 miles.

People are less friendly to you when you look like death

I think Bicycle Guy usually doesn’t do this, but since I am a normal, friendly person, I smile and say “Hi” to everyone I pass during a bike ride. Early in my practice run, every person returned the greeting and waved back at me. As the morning wore on, however, fewer and fewer people smiled back. At first, I thought this just confirmed my theory that early risers are friendlier than everyone else. When I got home and looked in the mirror, however, I realized that throughout the ride, my face had slowly morphed into a sunburned corpse. No one wants to smile at a sunburned corpse.

Being on the other en of a braggy Facebook status does not feel great

Around 35 miles into my practice run, I began scanning the road for drivers of pick-up trucks who would accept money to carry my bike back home. Instead, I found a short, steep hill. I pedaled as far up the hill as I could (maybe 10 feet?) and got off my bike to walk the rest. At that moment, a big-boned 55-year-old mom blew past me on her bike. She was moving faster than I had the whole ride.

I stewed the rest of the way home, because I knew that incident would make me part of a braggy, sweaty Facebook selfie later that day.

“Just finished a 10-mile bike ride. Rode past a 16-year-old kid who had to walk his bike up a hill. Didn’t think I was in THAT good of shape!” #blessed #momsquad

Bicycle seats are much worse than normal seats

I have a lot of experience sitting in chairs. I don’t like to brag, but I can sit for upwards of five hours without standing up once. Never once, in my whole life, have I received a butt bruise from sitting in a chair.

But after just a few hours on a bike that morning, I knew my butt would never be the same again. It seems physically impossible that a seat could do so much damage in such a short amount of time.

 

So the training run did not go well, but at least it provided some important lessons for the real ride. Unfortunately, I still had one more lesson to learn on the day of the race:

Bicycle Guy is serious about helmets

Last I checked (age 12ish) bike helmets were not cool. Therefore, I do not own one. When I rolled up to the starting line, I discovered that Bicycle Guy ALWAYS wears a helmet. I was the only rider without one. Two minutes before the start of the race, I heard, “Excuse me sir. Excuse me SIR.” I looked over to see a stern gentleman with a radio. “You’re not allowed to ride without a helmet.”

“Oh, I, uh…”

“Do you have a helmet?”

“No.”

“Then you’re going to have to come over here. You won’t be able to ride today.”

“I can just buy one from one of those vendors over there, right?”

I pointed at the five bike shops that had stands near the start line.

“They all sold out earlier this morning.”

“Does anybody have one I can borrow?”

“You can ask, but I think pretty much all the people who had helmets are already letting other riders borrow them.”

“Oh, uhhhhh…”

“You might want to start calling people,” he said as he walked away.

I am not a lawbreaker, but at that moment, I came super close to hopping on my bike and riding away. What could he do? He didn’t have a bike to chase me down. And even if he did, he’d need to take time to strap on his helmet first. I figured the very most he would do is turn around, shake his fist and yell, “CURSE YOU RIDER #2139!”

Only later did I realize that he had a radio on his hip, as did all 80 police officers along the course, and it wouldn’t be too hard for him to say, “Hey, I have a guy I need you to stop. He’s blonde and skinny and might kind of look like a sunburned corpse. Also, he’s the only one without a helmet.”

Finally, someone found a friend of a friend who had an extra helmet in her downtown apartment. A half hour later, I pedaled off in my purple-striped women’s helmet.

The ride actually went really well. The training run helped a lot, and by the end, I felt like I could ride another ten miles. Also, since I got a late start, I got to ride with Brandon from my work, who showed up late to the race.

Brandon didn’t train for the ride, and he had a lot of the same questions I did during my training run. About an hour into the race, he looked over at me. “We’ve been riding for 20, 25 miles, right?”

I smiled. It had been 10.

LIFE LESSON #25

If something is supposed to be “just like riding a bike,” run the other way.

P.S. If you enjoyed this story, would you consider donating a couple bucks to cancer research through my VeloSano page? Even though the race is over, they’re still accepting donations for the next couple of weeks. Thanks!