Motivations

 First, an update.  Last Saturday I rode a recovery loop to Paterson and added 18k. My total for my 500k September Challenge is 177km. Sunday was a "rest" day on which I did some fencing at home.  Monday I worked,  bought horse feed and groceries around a lot of driving.  And today it's pissing rain, but it is supposed to ease later and I need to be off to add some k's.

It seems that everyday I speak up motivational thoughts from Facebook posts or from podcasts (mostly Adventure Cycling with Chris Penasky ). Just now I heard an interview with long term ultra cyclist and runner Chris Bennett.  Wow! He makes this caper so accessible to people,  non airs and graces,  no bombing people's ambitions, just full on Go For It attitude. 

This statement,  lifted from the Buddhist Wisdom page,  encourages the novice cycle tourer to go within for motivation and truth.  To street clear of any notion of trying to please others rather than your true self.  This is something I wish I knew decades ago.  

Anyway, the Children's Cancer Fundraiser challenge had been very useful. I suspect there are similar opportunities open to every cyclist around the world literally every day out the year.  All I did was sign up and nominate (publicly) that I am riding 500 clicks through September.  Letting the family know generated positive feedback and charitable donations  The only thing left then to do is for me to follow through with the  a challenge. 

Personally,  I feel that this challenge is a struggle  between my Old Self and my New Self.  My Old Self was an unhappily married guy, who then became a slightly happier and unmarried guy stressed stressed about losing his house and mowing lawns and gardening to pay the bills. The New Guy holds the deeds to an 80 acre farm,  living happily with two teenage children and helping my daughter build her horse breaking and training business.  Blocked by rising costs of boat ownership I pivoted to cycling as a mode to cheap adventure travel.  With a good used bike,  then a great used bike I built my maximum ride length from 10k to over 50k, and increased the average number of rides per week from one to more than four.  The new me is this guy,  keen and happy cyclist,  getting fitter,  developing a vision of cycle touring in its various forms and feeling awesome. I've never placed great store in financial wealth and am happy to have the best health I've had in decades and the potential to transform a few hundred bills and 7 days into an awesome adventure challenge. On behalf of my critics, I'd like to be more specific about distances,  destinations and bank balances but I'm not tempted.  I think to do so would be to a) answer to people that are unimportant and whose opinions I value way less than my own happiness,  and b) place limitations on myself because frankly I'm continually achieving new standards of personal greatness.  If someone had heard that I would be pelting around mtb tracks on Dungog Common at age 60, they would have scoffed loudly.  But not any more,  because I did it; 15k, for over an hour and, moments after receiving my Covid19 jab.

Honestly, the Old Me might have failed to rise to the challenge, but the New Me is stronger physically and mentally,  wiser and more confident. Cycling has greatly helped me build the confidence required to seek out a challenge and smash it.

Today,  for example,  it has been showing rain all morning.  Old Me would have leveraged the weather as an excuse against riding.  But the New Me saddled you and rode 44k offer three hours,  often in the rain.  I have now knocked 221k off my 500k Challenge. Nearly half way.  A few weeks ago I was not capable of riding 40k, left alone doing it in the rain,  into a headwind and without stopping for three hours.