I’m really getting tired of it.

All the way up Pilot Mountain during the 2005 Three Mountain Metric, I got it. “Come on big guy!” “You can do it big guy!” “Your almost there big guy!” I appreciate their enthusiasm, but whether you’re 17 stone climbing a mountain or 11 stone climbing a mountain, climbing anything more than half a mile on a bike is honorable. Climbing anything on a double is commendable. Climbing mountains with a standard double? Well, what can you say to 4 mph? “You’re almost there, big guy!”

To inspire those of us “big guys” climbing hills on bikes, I’ll remind you of the following:

“…a couple of years ago, I spent twenty-five hundred bucks of my professor’s salary on a race bicycle and started showing up three nights a week for a fast group road ride here in southern Illinois, at Carbondale Cycle and three nights a week the group handed me my proverbial fat-ass on a platter, which stood to reason. Back then, I smoked a pack a day and drank a case or two of beer a week and did shots of tequila or bourbon or kamikazes or you-name-it regularly at the bar with my graduate students. I weighed suited up in a skintight XXL cycling jersey an shorts, 255 pounds. Five feet ten inches tall, 255 pounds. I shouldn’t have shown up for group ride in that condition. I could have been hurt. Seriously. the group was just too much, too fast, flat-out beating the crap out of me every time. It’s a miracle I didn’t have a heart attack or a stroke or something trying to keep up. I kept coming back for more though because I needed the crap beaten out of me. That’s right. I needed atonement.”