How old were you when you started cycling?

[allabouteva]

You guys are awesome.

Lise, I tried to learn to swim about 5 years ago. I can swim a little, but not great and not far.

I should've been a little more persevering. After the one lesson, which was held indoors in a over chlorinated pool made me very woozy and sick to my stomach.

I should try again......But I'm not a huge water fan.....I'm happiest on my bike regardless of the number of times I've fallen!

eva

[Prairiedog]

Hello everyone.

I started riding a bike again four years ago, casually not so much for exercise although the point of getting the bike was to ride to town for exercise with my kids for ball in the summer. It is 4 miles one way. I had two kids in a Burley adding 75 pounds and the route is all gravel and hilly. My legs were like cast iron after that first summer.

This spring, at the tender age of 44 I just bought a new bike, Giant Yukon, so I can use the bike for pure exercise purposes. I have always worked out and stayed fit...I'm using biking mainly for crosstraining and something to do outdoors besides running. I bike mostly on gravel roads but do jump on paved roads too. So I don't fit into any category...not a road biker, not a mountain biker. I'm a gravel biker. That would be the expression I got from the guys at the bike shop when they asked me what kind of biking I did.

I have just found this website this week so I have really enjoyed reading alot of the threads already. I have also bought three books this week on triathlon training...it's a goal.

[Prairiedog]

Eva...I wanted to comment to you about swimming. You should try lessons again. Listen, I have been a swimmer all my life but never a competitive swimmer...a couple of years ago I got a book on improving your swimming technique for speed in the water and omg, it has been like relearning how to swim all over again. I had no idea I was doing it all wrong or at least, not doing it right. When I decide to get serious about a triathlon I will need to work with a swimming coach to improve my technique in the water.

Don't be embarrassed or afraid, take those swimming lessons!

[SandyLS]

I started biking (as an adult) about four years ago. I was looking for an activity that hubby and I could enjoy together. He also started to ride a bike (recumbent) about that time. I started with my daughter's old mountian bike and bought my first road bike last year. I turned 59 last month. Also, I became a certified scuba diver at the age of 53. I guess this year I am going to take up kayaking since I won a beautiful new Hurricane kayak in a drawing I entered at a cross country ski event last March. Lucky me! I think that I am just trying to prove to myself that I am not too old to be doing all of these foolish things. So far it seems to be working!

[Lise]

I guess this year I am going to take up kayaking since I won a beautiful new Hurricane kayak in a drawing I entered at a cross country ski event last March. Lucky me! I think that I am just trying to prove to myself that I am not too old to be doing all of these foolish things. So far it seems to be working!

I love this-- you won a kayak at a x-c ski event! Oh, man, my 50s are going to be great! I'll be 46 in July, and expect to have my best tri season ever this year, then plan to do a 1/2 IM at the end of next season. Who knows what other sports I might pick up? I am delighted to be around you inspiring women!

[mtkitchn]

Rode a lot as a kid until my mid teens. Took up biking again in November at age 40. Plan to do a century ride sometime this year. Love to show off to my little brother that I'm in better shape than he is.

[jobob]

I biked around a lot in junior high & high school, especially before I got my driver's license with my trusty tres-kewl baby blue CCM 10 speed.

My biggest crash to date knock wood was way back then when I was riding with my best friend on our way back from tennis lessons at the community college across town, and I looked back to say something to her and neglected to notice a station wagon (this of course is mid-70s, no such thing as mini vans or SUVs back then) had stopped directly ahead of me. I saw it just in time to do a perfect 90-degree low-speed T-bone into the back of said station wagon. I kept going over the handlebars and did a face plant into the back door.

When everyone picked me and the bike up from the ground, I was spitting out little bits of tooth which was disconcerting We checked out my bike it looked OK at first, but the front wheel wouldn't turn. It took a moment to figure out that the fork had bent back perfectly symetrically (owing to the precise right angle of my collision ) and the front tire was smooshed back against the downtube. I remember crying "my beautiful bike!!" (see, I was One of Us even back then). Station Wagon Mom - who was understandably a bit shaken up by the fact that a teenager whacked herself into the back of her car - drove me & my bike home and made sure I was OK. I found I had a little inverted v-shaped chunk missing from the bottom of my 2 top front teeth where they met. I hightailed it to my dentist, who found no major damage and filed down my 2 front teeth so the ^ wouldn't be so obvious. (So my 2 top front teeth are to this day about a mm or so shorter than god originally intended)

Dad took the bike back to the bike shop where we bought it, and either they didn't have a replacement light blue fork available or it cost too much (we were not well off and this was the least expensive 10-speed in the bike shop, I think the bike had cost $95 on sale and my parents balked at the price), but next thing I knew they put an uuuugly unpainted steel replacement fork on it. Whaaa, they ruined my beautiful bike.

I still toodled around on it but it wasn't quite the same, I thought it looked so dorky with the steel fork, the rest of it being such a pretty light blue. I brought it with me to college and my BF at the time told me he'd "fix it up" for me but instead he messed it up somehow and it never quite shifted right again. bozo. The bike eventually was stolen but it was no biggie for me by then.

Fast forward almost 25 years. Lee and I decided we were getting entirely too fat so we bought hybrid bikes to toodle around on. He took to it like gangbusters and started losing lots of weight. There was a road bike he was longing for, I urged him to get it, after a few weeks I asked if I could try it, and I wouldn't give it back until I got one of my own. That was Pokey, which marked the start of when I really got into cycling. It was December of 2003, and I had just turned 44.

So there you have it.