I’ve discussed the Serious Cyclist, now its time to explore the demographics of yet another breed of cyclist, the ultramarathoner. The ultramarathoner makes the Serious Cyclist look like a wimp. While most of us feel proud to have done a century, your ultramarathoner does that before breakfast.
You can tell ultramarathoners by their equipment. They always carry lights. Who knows, you might just pop down to the grocery store for a quart of milk and decide to come back by way of Montreal. The ultramarathoner's saddle is easy to spot. It's a super expensive super lightweight job that is mostly worn through and supplemented with duct tape and Doctor Scholl's pads. You see a lot of saddles with holes in them these days, the ultra crowd have saddles with holes that they WORE through. The ultramarathoner dashboard usually consists of aero handlebars, aero clip ons, and an assortment of tubes and other devices that rivals the life support system of the intensive care unit at the local hospital.
On a ride, normal people would like to know what time it is. Your ultramarathoner would ask what day it is. The ultramarathoner buys power bars by the case. The owner of the bike shops they frequent put their children through college on the proceeds of their business.
How does the ultramarathoner log the megamiles needed to do this and still hold a job? A workday in the life of the ultramarathoner goes something like this. First a bike commute to work. The ultramarathoner really only lives ten miles away from work, but takes fifty to get there. Shower, check voice mail, e-mail, then its time for the lunch ride. Since lunch consists of several power bars from a jersey pocket, no riding time is wasted in the actual eating process. Back to the office for recovery followed shortly by the commute home.
There's a word for these people, "randonneur," which is French for "my bikes wear out before I do." The French really started this sort of thing with Paris-Brest-Paris. This ride, as you might suspect, consists of getting on your bike, riding to Brest (which is a long way off), turning around and riding back to Paris. Not much sightseeing here. For the French this is often a family affair, "Let's go watch daddy ride his bike 1200km." I suspect the average American teenager, if they had a father like that, would go to great lengths to hide the fact.
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