Riding in Frankfort

Super Bowl Sunday came a couple of weeks ago and I found myself in Frankfort, visiting my in-laws. My mother-in-law's birthday was a couple of days before and we had gone there on the weekend to take her out to dinner.

The days leading up to our trip, I had been looking at the weather and seeing that the weather in Kentucky was going to be picture-perfect the entire weekend, which would be great for riding, except that I was going to be out of town.

The natural solution, of course, would be to take my bike with me, but my truck was out of commission at the time due to a busted transmission, and we were making the trip in my wife's Neon. Undeterred. I decided to make a go of it any way, laying our suitcase in the trunk, then placing my bike in the trunk over top of it, back wheel first, leaving the front wheel and handlebars hanging out the back. With a short piece of rope, I then tied the trunk door down firmly against the bike, and we were off.

I was excited about riding in Frankfort. First, the weather looked to be great, and I looked forward to spending a few hours outside, zipping through the streets. Secondly, though, I live in the Appalachian foothills, which can make for some challenging riding, but Frankfort is flat, in comparison. Sure, the Kentucky River cuts a mean gash through the center of the city, but my intention was to avoid that, saving my power for riding for as long as possible. My hope was to finally ride my first half-century. I flirted with the idea of riding to Lawrenceburg, or maybe braving a trip across the river valley to go to Lexington.

It was not to be. I did manage to go on a ride that day, but I found the terrain to be a lot tougher than I anticipated, and I ended up doing my usual 20 miles before I was completely wiped out.

For one, the outskirts of Frankfort, sans river valley, are nothing but rolling hills, an undulating landscape of long climbs and too-short descents. A more experienced rider, perhaps, would have no trouble navigating the terrain, but as I've mentioned before, I'm not that experienced.

For one, this was my first serious attempt at a ride following a winter of limited riding, and my conditioning, never that great to begin with, had fallen off some from its peak back in October. Second, my bike and my build make any ride more challenging for me than they are for these skinny little guys on their skinny little bikes, who are the stereotype of a cyclist.

This is tough for me. Sometimes, back in the summer when another rider would zip past me while I was chugging along, I would get discouraged. Here I was, giving it all I had and managing to only average 11 or 12 mph, while they were breezing along at 20 or more. Or I would picking up a cycling magazine and read about guys averaging 25 mph and knocking out 100-mile trips in an afternoon.

The discouraging part is that I want to be like those guys, yet I'm nowhere near. So I have to constantly remind myself that it will take some time before I get there. I try to remember that I'm carrying 50 or 100 lbs. more on my body, and I tell myself that they probably couldn't do as well as I'm doing if they were carrying the equivalent of a elementary-school child on their backs.

Someday soon, I'll get to the fitness level I want, though not as soon as I would like (which is now). But to get there, I will have to lose weight and put in the miles.

Below is a map of my ride around Frankfort. One thing you'll notice is that there are a lot of stops and starts along my journey, an indication of where I first attempted to go one way, then thought better of it. And while I was expecting my ride through Frankfort to be easier than that to which I'm accustomed, in many ways it was tougher. Sure, the hills are not quite as severe as some I encounter back in Prestonsburg or Paintsville, but they're constant. I flew over the first few, as I expected I would, but after five miles or so, they started to take their toll. I would work to get to the top of the hill, and then once I did, the descent afterwards would be over much too quick before I was chugging uphill once again. As a result, the entire ride felt like it was one constant uphill climb.

All in all, though, it wasn't a bad ride, and it's one I will look forward to tackling again ... once I'm in a little better shape.