Gregory Shepard trains for a 600-mile bike ride along California's coast with no prior long-distance cycling experience. His first training rides cover 30 to 70 miles, leaving him battling severe saddle soreness and struggling up steep coastal hills. He's now staring down 550 miles remaining and rethinking his mileage strategy.
Chapters
All right, so this is my first day riding for the, uh, training for the 600-mile Wright Ride bike ride. I've never ridden before, but I got this like cool bike and, uh, you know, and I got all the stuff and we'll see how this goes. Okay, so I did almost 50 miles. And, uh, my ass feels like hamburger. I've never ridden that far in my whole life. I decided to go as far as I could to get ready for this 600-mile trip, and it was very painful, very hard. The last 10 miles were— I had to dig deep. Uh, rough first time. Maybe I need to start out with a little less miles to start out with. But I pulled it off and I know where I'm at, so we'll see. So I'm, uh, on the Coast Highway and I'm about halfway through a 44, 43-mile ride today. My wife is going to meet me in— I can't remember the name of the town, but this is how beautiful it is where I am. I'm riding up that big-ass hill. I'm doing good so far. Doing— got some cramps and, uh, body aches, but I'm, but I'm doing good. Okay, 50 miles again, but up a really huge hill that was so hard that I almost like fell I almost fell over. I was going so slow, people were like walking as fast as me, and my legs were shaking so bad that I almost fell over. But I did it. I did 50. I was going for 75, but I didn't account for that massive hill. So, uh, I'll try it again. All right, so I did the most I've ever done, 70 miles. Um, I got like— there's levels of pain that that I haven't had before that I had this time. Extremely hard. And now I'm a little bit intimidated about this, about this 545 miles. So, you know, but I did it. So 30 miles, uh, not bad actually. The air is certainly a lot thicker down here, but check it out, it's beautiful. Back in San Diego, baby. Okay, the rain stopped, but, uh, that was the first time I've ever ridden a bike, uh, that far. And, uh, that was fucking hard. That was really hard. The last, I don't know, 10 miles or so were just gnarly, but I did I guess, uh, over 40 miles. So, you know, good first day. I'm in my hotel room staring at my bike. It's me and that. 550 miles.
