One Ride at a Time (eBook)
286 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-0983-9491-2 (ISBN)
Have you ever allowed your fears and doubts to prevent you from pursuing your boldest and most audacious goals? At an age when most people are slowing down, Rob Leachman set off on the adventure of a lifetime. In 2017, Rob and his wife, Bev, had just turned sixty years old and were recreational cyclists at best. But they refused to let their age prevent them from pursuing their goals and dreams. Instead, they embarked from San Diego on a 3,000-mile bicycle tour across the southern United States, hoping to reach the Atlantic Ocean forty-six days later. As they prepared to begin their journey, Rob and his wife found themselves nervous and more than a little fearful of what was to come. Unsure of their chances of success, they departed with seven other riders on what would become the adventure of their lives. Averaging seventy miles a day riding on busy highways and isolated country roads, through cities and deserts and over mountains, pushed them far outside their comfort zone and drove them to exceed their limitations in ways they never thought possible. They reached their destination in Florida shortly after experiencing a profound tragedy that came to define the entire journey. Now, Rob invites you to join him as he recounts this incredible adventure and the many life lessons he learned along the way, lessons that can help you to . . . Stretch yourself and achieve goals you thought were out of reach. Follow your heart and find your own adventure. Break through limitations to live your best life. Written with humor and deep reflection, "e;One Ride at a Time: Life Lessons Learned on a Cross-Country Bicycle Ride"e; will leave readers captivated by the story of these cyclists pursuing a life-long dream and enchanted by such a unique viewpoint of this vast nation. And like these adventurers, it may leave you yearning to pursue that long-time goal you've always wanted to attain. Whether you're an avid cyclist or an armchair adventurer, you're sure to find this unique perspective of America and tale of personal growth a ride worth taking.
Prologue
“You Want to Do What?”
If you tried to envision the prototypical cross-country cyclist—young, lean, athletic-looking, adventurous, risk-taker, etc.—that individual would likely bear little resemblance to me or my wife Bev. And there was little in either of our backgrounds to suggest we would one day tackle, much less complete, such a challenging journey.
Born and raised in different parts of the Midwest, Bev outside of Chicago and I near Kansas City, we grew up in the 1960s and 70s before the fitness craze began to fully take hold. As a child, I recall shopping for school clothes at J.C. Penney where we always found our way to the section with “husky” blue jeans. Though I had some athletic ability, I maintained my rather pudgy physique until my high school years, when I finally shed much of my “baby fat.” As I moved on to college, where I focused on academics to the exclusion of any collegiate athletic endeavors, my weight began to stabilize at around 200 lb. on my 5’10” frame. Though I have been mostly able to maintain relatively good physical condition, I have kept that “husky” frame throughout adulthood. In other words, when one thinks of those svelte and lanky riders climbing historic peaks in the Alps during the Tour de France, my image doesn’t come to mind.
As a female coming into maturity in the 1970s, Bev grew up under far different circumstances. Although she grew up in a household that celebrated sports and competition for her two brothers, like most during that generation her family simply didn’t stress athletics for their only daughter, just as American society during that time placed minimal emphasis on sports for young women. There was no malice on the part of her parents in failing to push Bev toward physical activity; rather, their mindset represented a symptom of some of the cultural traditions from which American society was just beginning to evolve. Within ten years of her graduation from high school, interscholastic athletics for female students were in full bloom. That, however, did little to address Bev’s naturally competitive instincts.
As a child, Bev had to find other avenues for the physical activity her body craved. Though in adulthood she has found maintaining a healthy body weight to be fairly natural, as a child she received “good-natured” ribbing for being overweight. Perhaps these seemingly related factors, a lack of organized physical activity and ridicule for being mildly overweight as a child, contributed to the active, healthy lifestyle Bev has followed through adulthood. Even fifty years later, she still has vivid memories of the childhood joy of being outside in the Indiana summer sunshine, and in particular the times she spent riding her bicycle with her friends around the small town in which she grew up. Even at that young age she required sunlight and physical activity, a visceral need that would follow her into adulthood.
After high school, Bev attended Murray State University in Kentucky where she studied Speech and Language Pathology. Having also graduated from high school in 1975, I moved on to Northwest Missouri State University where I pursued my lifelong aspiration of becoming a history teacher. Though we hadn’t yet met, in our later years of undergraduate study we both began running for fitness, an activity that would in time become an important avocation for each of us and one that would lead us to run numerous half-marathons and eventually a full marathon.
Upon graduation, I accepted a position as a high school teacher and coach in a growing school district in the northern suburbs of Kansas City, Missouri. Beyond my wildest imagination at the time, thirty years later I would retire as Superintendent of that school district. During my second year in that teaching position as I was coaching football, one of the other assistant coaches mentioned that his sister had moved to Kansas City to complete her master’s degree in Speech and Language Pathology at the University of Kansas Medical Center. Working behind the scenes, my fellow assistant football coach and his wife conspired to get the two of us together. Bev and I began dating that fall and were married the following August. Three years later we welcomed a son, and two years after that, a daughter.
The starting of a family made our already busy lives much more hectic. Bev was serving as a speech therapist in a nearby school district and I had continued in my teaching and coaching position. I had also completed one graduate degree in educational administration and had begun a second in the same field. Before the birth of our children, we remained focused on fitness, running three to four times each week in addition to weight training at a local fitness center. We purchased our first road bikes, long since discarded, and eventually completed an MS 150 bicycle ride for the physical challenge and to raise funds for multiple sclerosis. The first day of this weekend trek took us eighty-five hilly and windy miles through central Missouri, a distance that proved particularly daunting. As we arrived at our overnight campsite at the Missouri State Fairgrounds, we were almost too exhausted to put up our tent and genuinely questioned how we would be able to complete the next day’s sixty-five-mile ride. But we did manage to put up our tent, and despite even more challenging conditions, we completed the second day’s ride with surprisingly few struggles.
From this experience, we learned two vital lessons that would serve us well in future adventures. First, long bicycle rides require specific training, as being in good running shape and being prepared for hours on a bike are two different issues. Second, the human body is incredibly resilient and its ability to recover is amazingly robust. Other than training for and completing that two-day charity ride many years ago, Bev and I considered ten to fifteen miles to be a “long bicycle ride.” But with running, occasional cycling, and regular weight training, we were in decent cardiovascular condition.
With the arrival of our two children, our lives were transformed in so many ways. With time more limited, the regular exercise that had been so important to us became a casualty. We ran less frequently and gave up biking and visits to the gym entirely. Like many young couples with families and developing careers, we devoted much of our available time to our children and their activities and development.
Shortly after the birth of our daughter, I accepted my first position as a high school principal, the beginning of what would be a twenty-two-year career in school administration. Because I worked at least sixty hours most weeks and continued to work on an advanced graduate degree, there was no time for exercise; or perhaps more accurately, I failed to make time. And as Bev continued to work as well and was forced to assume even more of the responsibilities related to our household and children, the bulk of her fitness time was also curtailed. Like many young couples, we were devoted to nurturing our children, advancing professionally, and otherwise simply surviving. For both of us, our fitness, and likely our health, suffered.
In time, though, our children got older and increasingly independent, and as our respective careers continued to progress and provide more flexibility, we were able to gradually resume our fitness regimen. We ran several times each week, joined another fitness club, and eventually purchased bicycles, this time hybrid bikes that could be ridden on both roads and trails. Our return to fitness was gradual, but it felt great to be back outside and to make some real progress toward getting back into shape. While Bev had maintained a fairly consistent body weight during our time of less physical activity, my weight had gradually crept upward, and as I continued to get older it became increasingly challenging to shed those extra pounds. Still, it felt great to improve my cardiovascular fitness.
Many runners and cyclists, even those like Bev and I, who are active strictly for fitness purposes rather than competitive instincts, have long-range goals or “bucket-list” items they would like to someday complete. For us, the completion of a marathon was at the top of our list, something we wanted to do in our younger years but had not, in part because of family and work obligations. As we got older and into our early forties, we decided that if we didn’t reach this goal soon, we might never do so. By 1999, I had completed work toward a doctoral degree, and with a possible job change on the horizon the time seemed right for a significant physical challenge. So, we decided to begin training for a fall marathon, waiting to commit ourselves to a specific race until we were more assured we could actually complete the 26.2-mile distance. That commitment would not come until early November as we completed a brutally cold and windy 23-mile training run just three weeks before the Dallas White Rock Marathon. As assured as was possible, we registered for the race, made air and hotel reservations, and began our final preparations.
We had completed the bulk of our final training in unseasonably cold autumn weather in Kansas City. When we arrived in Dallas, though, we learned that the forecast for marathon day called for unseasonably warm temperatures with sunny skies. Bev handled the conditions well, but I struggled as the race progressed, drinking copious amounts of water (likely too much, as I would later learn) as I tried to deal with the hot and sunny conditions. But we finished,...
| Erscheint lt. Verlag | 9.11.2021 |
|---|---|
| Sprache | englisch |
| Themenwelt | Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Sport |
| ISBN-10 | 1-0983-9491-7 / 1098394917 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-0983-9491-2 / 9781098394912 |
| Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR) | |
| Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt? |
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