I am 48. I have been biking for 26 years. In my 20's, I biked for transportation: to college, to work, to laundry on an old 70's Schwinn Continental. None of it was really more than 8 miles at a time as I lived very close to everything. At that time, I rode the bike about 50%, as I also had a boyfriend with a car. In my early-mid 30's I strictly rode a mt. bike. I lived in Shutesbury, MA and was a lab analyst at UMass, Amherst for 7 years. I'd commute to Amherst occasionally on the mt bike. But I lived on a 5 mile dirt road that wasn't kind to road bikes. As recreation I rode pavement and single track with the mt bike during that time at least 3x/week. In my late 30's to now I moved to the "eastern" part of the state and lived in various towns with no dirt roads but pavement . I bought road bikes for my new pavement riding. Now I ride for recreation 20-60 mile distances - maybe around 100 miles/week during peak season. Actually though, since the gas price increase, starting last month I have been doing a partial commute on my Specialized Ruby, about 32-40 miles round-trip and having a blast doing this.