unreasonable goals

[Bad JuJu]

I agree that encouragement can help people do apparently miraculous things sometimes. But inappropriate encouragement can also lead people to do things they're not prepared for. The trick is encourage our friends to challenge themselves without sending them off to hurt themselves.

As an addendum to Denise's idea about training, is it possible to just take your friend out for a longish ride or two? If he's untrained, just a 30-40-mile ride may be enough to show him the difficulty of what he's planning to get himself into. If he gets to mile 30 or 40 and is tapped out, you can maybe gently bring up the idea of having to do that same thing times 2 (and then some!) for 7 days in a row. OTOH, if he goes the distance (and can do it again the next day) and still feels excited about doing the AIDS ride, maybe he does have a shot.

[Eden]

I'm going to be devil's advocate here and say that if this fellow is in reasonable physical shape his goal is not impossible at all. It may not be the most comfortable trip for him, but it likely won't kill him either. Hey he's got 3 months to do some preparing still.

When I was just a kid, about 11 or 12, my mom decided she wanted to try some loaded bicycle touring, the end goal, a week long ride in Nova Scotia. Our "training" consisted of a some weekend rides and a few overnight weekend tours, more as an equipment shakedown. Our distances were not as long as the LifeCycle tour, but hey, I was 12, I was riding a heavy Sears, steel, kids bike and I was carrying clothes, camping gear, etc. When I was in college my husband and I used to go out and do loaded touring without training for it. We did distancces as long as 90 miles with fully loaded bikes. The only trick was to take it slow, plenty of seeing the sights, plenty of rest breaks.

If your friend really wants to do it and gets out and rides his new bike during the next 3 months I see no reason why he can't do the trip and have fun.