What? You pulled a Hincapie?

After I signed up for the BP MS 150 ride in December 2012, the next step was to start preparing for it. As I have told you earlier, before this I had never even owned a road bike. But how hard could it be? The bike machines in the gym are way easier than the treadmills, aren't they?

So I enlisted a good friend who had already done the BP MS 150 before to help me buy a bike. And that was when it started to sink in. This is a completely different game compared to running. And the bike and the equipment are the least of your worries because usually your budget will restrain you to the kind of bike that you will end up with. Keep additional funds for all the gear - clothing, helmet, shoes, pedals, spares, tools etc.

As I was going through the process of acquiring these things I started to realize that everything is different in this world compared to the running world that I was taking a break from for a while.

The first obvious one were the brands - for some reason, there was no sight of the familiar brands of Nike, Saucony, Asics and Brooks. I was having to decide between Giro, Louis Garneau, Canari, Specialized, Trek, Cannondale and Hincapie.

Then came the terminology, people, routes, training plans, quirks – things I was expecting would be different.

What took me by surprise was how different the effort itself was because in my mind it was just another endurance sport. It took the first long ride for me to realize that the definition of “long” in bicycling was different than that in running. The first long ride was 4 hours. And after that I just sat in front of the fridge the rest of the day. I was hungry and no amount of food would satiate it.

Then it was the pain. During my initial days of pavement pounding, after a long run I would have sore legs. Getting used to the saddle for 6 hours at a stretch is another ball game. And of course there was that clip pedal that I had to get used to. I was told I will fall a few times before I learn to unclip. What I did not realize was how clumsy I was and how bad a fall can be. I won’t go into the gory details but it will suffice to say that after a helmet that has an end to end horizontal crack, I have learned to unclip. But I keep consoling myself that I am not killing my knees any more.

The fact that bicycling allows you to cover a long distance at a slow pace, has allowed me to appreciate a lot of things that I usually zip through – rice fields, pine forests, beautiful ranch houses, longhorns. It has also made me realize that Texas is not all that flat and it can be really windy in the wide open spaces. I have a new appreciation for gas stations and how some of them serve more as watering holes for riders than actually selling gas to trucks.

I think it is a great sport to get into even if you have not done it before. If you go in with a spirit to explore it will be a lot of fun.

Click here to help Sandeep's MS150 fundraising effort