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Saturday, March 26, 2011

100 Miles of Nowhere

I was cruising the internet and one of my all time favourite websites www.fatcyclist.com, when I read about a sadistic challenge called "100 Miles of Nowhere". It began as a bet a few years ago and is growing into a bigger event that raises money for cancer research.


What is the 100 miles of nowhere? Well, it involves riding your bike for 100 miles (which is 160km for the metric users), around a very short and repetitive loop or for the truely hardcore, 100 miles on stationary rollers. For anyone that has ever ridden on rollers or a wind trainer that matter, this is true suffering.
Sitting on your bike for 5 1/2 hours going absolutely nowhere. And the beauty of rollers is that you get no break; you cannot stop. If you stop pedalling, your wheels stop and you fall off. If you take your hands off the bars, unless you are extremely skilled, you will fall off. If you stop concentrating, (maybe this is just me) you will fall off.


After reading about the challenge, I decided to jump on some rollers to get a taste for it. After 4 years on the rollers (it is common knowledge that 15 minutes in roller time is actually 1 year in real time), I was ready to shoot myself. The sheer boredom or staring at the ground in front of myself made it the longest 4 years of my life. I tried watching a movie, but my roller skills are somewhat lacking and I can't look at the screen for more than 5 seconds (real time) without getting the wobbles.

100 Miles of Nowhere is on June 4th. You receive a great pack if you register, however, I don't know if this is possible for those outside of the US and all proceeds go to the Livestrong Foundation. Sadly, I'm not sure that I could bare it!

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