In Praise of Cycling
How 100 miles through the French Loire Valley reinvigorated my love for the pedals.
I probably thought of myself as a cyclist long before I thought of myself as a runner.
About 13 years ago, I won a really nice bike from BMC –– a prominent and respected Swiss manufacturer in the cycling world. Cyclists who knew their stuff far better than I did or ever would were incredulous that a schmuck like me would get handed a bike nicer than anything they could dream of riding.
They weren’t wrong. I won the bike because BMC was running a contest, looking for people to ride in the 270-kilometer (167 miles) Tour of Flanders in Belgium. Winners scored a free bike, built to ride the hilly cobblestones that are the hallmark of the race, and a trip to Belgium to participate in the amateur ride.
I won, for reasons that remain unclear to me, based off a goofy video I made. I don’t even remember the premise. I remember doing a pratfall with my old bike, decidedly not a sport bike, and sharing a picture of myself on a spin bike. I was essentially hiding the fact that I had never ridden with road bike pedals, the kind where you clip in and it becomes part of your body.
In so many ways, I was not the person who should’ve won that bike. But I did. And so I became a cyclist pretty much overnight, joining my father-in-law on group rides and pedaling out as far as Youngstown from Cleveland for a training ride (168 kilometers / 104 miles). I went to Belgium, rode in the Tour of Flanders, and continued cycling in Cleveland and brought the bike with me to Germany. I even rode the Tour of Flanders a second time, not as a guest of BMC, with my father-in-law a year or two after moving to Düsseldorf.
But in Berlin, the bike has spent most of its time in the basement. I’d already made the transition to a runner first and foremost. The pandemic offered up some wonderfully empty streets for me to ride, but the traffic lights spread throughout the city ate chunks out of the ride. Then once the cars came back, I just doubled down on running.
Late last summer, I dusted off Bea (the name I gave my BMC) for a ride along the Berlin Wall Trail for a video and a couple of articles I was working on. The traffic lights and cars were still there. But once I got onto the trail itself, the wind brushed against my face and I was reminded of the liberating joy of cycling.
Unfortunately, it was the last time I was on my bike. Winter followed shortly thereafter and dressing for winter cycling is a sport unto itself with all the layers and extra gear you need to stay reasonably comfortable. But that joyous feeling stuck with me and I was determined to do more riding in 2025. The problem has always been: How to work it into all the traveling we do, especially when a good chunk of my travel is for running –– which itself is often for work?
Serendipity struck in France. I was already signed up to run a 50K ultramarathon in Alsace when the opportunity came up to ride the Loire By Bike trail for an article. So after finishing the race, I grabbed some shut eye and made my way to Orléans to pick up my bike and the trail.
I’m no gear head, no matter the sport, but the bike was an obvious downgrade from riding with Bea. For starters, I couldn’t clip into the pedals. That’s not to say it wasn’t a nice bike. It was certainly a step up from what I rode down to Akron twice along the Towpath Trail before Bea came into my life, well before I even knew it was possible to clip into pedals.
Though there were certainly a couple of hills that would’ve been a thrill to climb with clip pedals (not to mention easier), I had to remind myself that whipping along the trail wasn’t the point of the trip. I was there for an easy ride, exploring the different castles and villages along the way. For that, I had everything I needed. The only thing I was truly missing were some padded bike shorts. (Let’s just say… Things got tender.)
Even more so than my ride along the Berlin Wall Trail some eight months earlier, the Loire Valley brought me back to the pure joys of cycling. Unlike running, you can ease up and coast for a bit on the back of a bike. Generally speaking, in running, if you stop –– you stop. Buzzing through the air without so much as moving a muscle, I have to imagine it’s the closest feeling a human will ever get to flying.
I don’t know when the next bike trip will be. There’s a nascent trail in eastern Bulgaria I’m hoping to ride and write about, but no set date. All I know is that I can’t wait quite as long to get back on the pedals as I have in the past.
If nothing else, it’s a hell of a way to recover from running an ultramarathon.