Rando Reflections
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2015 Question Marks
January– a cold month prone to dreary days and shades of brown on all sides– is generally an optimal time for me to hang out inside and ponder big ideas for the year ahead. Usually at least two or three appealing active undertakings grab me and won’t let me go. Last year those big doings… Continue reading
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PBP 2015: To Go or Not to Go Again?
The turning of the calendar to 2015 also means the arrival of a “PBP year.” Paris-Brest-Paris, the most heralded, historic, and international of all grand randonnees now peeps its head around the corner and beckons to us randonneurs, a mere eight months away. I thought that deciding on a return trip to PBP would take little internal debate.… Continue reading
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The Wheelman’s Song
Those of you who follow me on Instagram may have noticed that I’ve been perusing old issues of The Wheelman and Good Roads. Both magazines were publications of the League of American Wheelman, which is now the Bike League, and date back to the late 1800’s, when people’s fascination with the bicycle was just beginning… Continue reading
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Hard Reset
I came over to this computer intending to write a Coffeeneuring Challenge update (entries due this Monday!), but instead I’m pondering other matters– small changes in my own life that have altered my daily routine and energy levels for the past few months. One month ago– though it feels longer– I completed my second marathon of October,… Continue reading
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Contemplative Fall
Recollections of the harvest and farmers working fields long past sundown. Walks across campus, heavy book-filled backpacks on our shoulders, feet drifting through drying leaves. The donning of long sleeves to absorb the chill of mornings that advise of even colder times to come. It’s odd how this time can feel like a stopping point. The end of one cycle,… Continue reading
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Talking, Planning, Doing
Anything is possible to achieve on the internet. Talk is the only requirement. I’m thinking about riding insert whole lots of miles here this year. I’m planning to do insert impressive event here. Articulated aspirations can make us heroes in our own minds. Planning also has its place. I’m planning to do insert impressive event here. These are the… Continue reading
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Chasing Mailboxes: The Pursuit of Something More
Where does your energy go? What do you choose to pursue? Does each day pass in a blur of routine, or do you save a sliver of time to wonder about the existence of something deeper? You don’t know what the something deeper is, exactly, and you are not convinced it is a thing. You hold onto an optimistic belief that… Continue reading
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A Post-1000K Conversation With “Future Me”
Immediately after Felkerino’s and my 1000K ride, I was proud of our accomplishment, relieved that we completed what I felt was an extremely challenging course, and happy that we rode within ourselves from beginning to end. There were several tough parts, but we did not come close to timing out and, and our bodies held… Continue reading
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Enduring the Pain Point
Mile 250 of our 625-mile ride. Fatigue courses through my body. My skin has that beat-up feeling from multi-day endurance riding. The sun is shrouded in fog and the road keeps going up. Mile 372. Crawling through Douthat State Park. It’s peaceful and wooded, but night is falling. And the road keeps going up. And… Continue reading
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Melting Time Under the Moonlight
A self-confessed person of routine, I don’t stay out late and I don’t rise before the sun most days. I eat three meals a day, work Monday through Friday, and try to sleep seven to eight hours a night. I’m a huge fan of sleep. Randonneuring appeals to my affinity for routine. I select the events I… Continue reading
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Things to Do During Your Taper
Ah, the taper. Time to back away from the long efforts, rest the legs, eat good meals, and ready for the big day. What’s a person to do with all this new-found spare time? Continue reading
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Preparing for a 1000K Brevet
After a summer of bicycling, the Appalachain Adventure 1000K is fast approaching, and Felkerino and I will be riding it. Given that the Appalachian Adventure is a late summer affair, Felkerino and I maintained a pretty big base of mileage since finishing the Super Randonneur series with the D.C. Randonneurs. Despite not tracking my cycling miles, I still have a… Continue reading
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Bicycle as Escape
I never seem to tire of writing about bicycles. I love talking about them, dreaming about my next bike trip, figuring out the perfect bike commute setup, pondering the ins and outs of randonneuring… you get the idea. This love of riding bikes led me to start Chasing Mailboxes. I was searching for an outlet… Continue reading
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Spreadsheet Ruminations: Are You There, Legs? It’s Me…
Three months ago I ditched the spreadsheet I used to document my bicycle lifestyle, opting instead for a non-quantitative approach. There’s more to life than counting up the miles, I told myself. I want to explore it. Over the last three months, I have documented many rides with journal entries and taken photos along the… Continue reading
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Four Years of Chasing Mailboxes
In the middle of a love affair with bicycling and Washington, D.C., I wrote my first post for Chasing Mailboxes. Four years later, this blog is still going. The love affair has hit some sticky wickets over time, but most days it continues, too. In the initial year, posts read more like postcards than letters.… Continue reading
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Writing Your Way to the Ride You Want
Throughout my time randonneuring, I have gone through different phases. My primary goal during my first series of riding brevets was to finish within the time limits. This was also a time of intense learning about fueling and fitness, melding as a tandem team with Felkerino, as well as getting to know the randonneuring community. After starting this blog in… Continue reading
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Randonneur Crazy People
How many miles does one have to ride to meet the minimum crazy threshold? Has anyone figured it out? Continue reading
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In Pursuit of Bliss
If you ever decide to dabble in the randonneuring arts, it’s likely going to be of benefit for you to work on your patience. In randonneuring, all parts of the ride unfold in their own time. No matter how furiously you pedal, the top of the climb will be reached when the road resolves to… Continue reading
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We Interrupt This Brevet for …
Sometimes when riding my bike, I feel like I’m inside a video game that’s throwing all manner of obstacles my way, and I have to react and deal with them in order to move on to the next level. Last weekend’s 600K had a fair number of these– enough that I began to take notice.… Continue reading
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Throwing Away the Cycling Spreadsheet
A funny thing happened to me at the end of April. Funny to me, anyway. I lost interest in tracking my cycling miles, and stopped caring about the number of days I rode each month. Instead of fighting that feeling, I’ve just gone with it, especially since this sentiment has been growing over the last… Continue reading
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Springing Over the Edge
After a winter considered cold by many in the Mid-Atlantic—including me, who grew up in Iowa but has since become weak to the elements– Spring finally broke through. Lo’ how great it was to see the browns and grays of winter dissipate, replaced with greenery, pastel colors of cherry blossoms and the vivid hues… Continue reading
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Why Ride Brevets?
Randonneuring requires a certain level of commitment (no, not that kind of commitment). Early rises, car rides, bike maintenance and tuning, convenience store dining, and long days and even evenings in the saddle are all part of the randonneur lifestyle. Given that most of us do not have unlimited leisure time, what is it about the… Continue reading
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On Naming Your Bike: The Baby Post of Bike Names
One of the posts people read frequently on this blog is Say My (Bike’s) Name: On Naming Your Bike, in which I described my tandem partner’s affinity for naming bikes and my own tendency not to do so. That bike naming post received great comments about people’s processes for naming bikes as well as their… Continue reading
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Say My (Bike’s) Name: On Naming Your Bike
Do your bikes have names? If so, how did you name them? Did you give them a name you would give a person, like Betty or Howard or something? Or is the name you gave your bike akin to something you might bestow on a pet, like Pumpkin or Spot or Patches? Did your bike… Continue reading
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Endurance: What the Research Doesn’t Tell You
When mainstream media picks up a thread about the effects of endurance pursuits on health, I usually hear about it. The most recent one I know of was covered in the Wall Street Journal. The article’s focus was “extreme exercisers,” and how they may experience some health benefits from their activities, but likely put their… Continue reading
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The Weekend Warrior
Like many people in this town, I work in an office environment Monday through Friday. I spend lots of time in front of a computer or sitting in meetings. Lots. For over 40 hours each week, I sit. And sit. And sit. To compensate for my largely sedentary work life I bike commute, pepper in… Continue reading
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Randonneuring: From Doing to Being
I started riding with the D.C. Randonneurs in 2005 when I was invited to participate on a flèche team. At that time, I had never ridden farther than a century and I had no idea what randonneuring was. Despite my ignorance the flèche sounded like an exciting opportunity to test my limits. To prepare for… Continue reading
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The Dogs I’ve Met Through Randonneuring
A Terrifying Beginning When I was a kid, I developed a serious apprehension about dogs. This feeling was exacerbated when I rode my bike, largely because one of the rural roads I often traveled was also home to Snoopy, the big mean biting dog. Snoopy was always in her yard, lying in wait for innocent… Continue reading
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Comparing a Marathon to Randonneuring
Every once in a while, someone asks me how a marathon compares to randonneuring. Running versus randonneuring was also a recent topic on the “randon” list, one of the main randonneuring listservs. Having just completed a marathon as well as a flèche and a 300K within a month’s timeframe, I thought I’d share my own… Continue reading
Chasing MailBoxes 