8-9-89 Wednesday. Yesterday I predicted it; today I did it. I broke my speed record for closed-loop riding, averaging 19.22 miles per hour for thirty miles. (“Closed-loop riding” means that I finish the ride where I started it; otherwise, the entire ride could be downhill.) That shatters the previous record—set just this past Sunday and tied yesterday—of 18.80 miles per hour. After eight years of bicycling, I finally reached the nineteen-mile-per-hour mark. It feels great. After ten miles, I had an average speed of 18.82 miles per hour. That was twenty-six seconds better than yesterday’s ride. Since conditions were roughly the same, I knew I had a shot at the record. I put forth extra effort during the second ten miles, averaging 18.34 miles per hour. Performing a quick calculation, I realized that if I averaged twenty miles per hour for the remaining ten miles, I’d have my nineteen. As it turns out, I did better than that; I finished the ride with sixty-seven seconds to spare. There was simply no stopping me after twenty miles. I was bound, bent, and determined to reach my goal. In other statistical news, I’ve ridden 195.2 miles in the past five days, for an average of thirty-nine miles per day. Also, as mentioned, this is the eighth anniversary of the purchase of my first ten-speed bicycle. In those eight years—nearly a quarter of my life—I’ve pedalled [sic; should be “pedaled”] 14,904.2 miles, giving me averages of 1863.0 miles per year, 35.7 miles per week, and 5.1 miles per day.
Readers of this journal who do not bicycle may wonder what prevents me from riding even faster. Why is progress so incremental? Why don’t I just go out and pedal hard for the entire thirty miles, insuring [sic; should be “ensuring”] an average speed of twenty miles per hour? It’s tempting to think that there’s a natural limit on how fast a given person can go on a given bicycle and a given route. As you get physically stronger, your average speed increases. But that’s misleading. The real cap on average speeds is one’s tolerance for pain. It hurts to sustain a rapid leg motion on hills and in the wind. When I stand up on the bike to climb a hill, for example, there comes a point when my legs start burning and I want nothing more than to relax them. Usually I do, but if I’m trying for a record speed, as I was today, I put up with the pain and discomfort. A better metaphor for bicycling is shopping. When you shop for a new car, there’s something (the car) that you want, but of course you’re not willing to pay any amount for it, even if you can afford it. You get what you’re willing to pay for. You can get a compact car for $6000, but if you want a [Pontiac] Grand Am, you must pay $10,000. In bicycling, the “car” is the average speed that you want; the “cost” is the pain and discomfort that you’ll experience in order to get it. While I ride, I’m constantly making tradeoffs of this nature. “Is it worth it to stand up on this hill?”, I ask myself. “Am I willing to put up with discomfort for the next ten miles in order to break a record?” Today I wanted the car badly enough to pay its price. I’m glad I did.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 