Radio Free Kirkopolis

Since I live in Southern Illinois and my daily rides consist of me on the back, country roads around my house. They’re nice and peaceful, but full of hills. Hills that are all over the place. I’m usually changing gears about once every 45 seconds. I don’t mind it all that much, the way I figure they’re making a man out of me.
However it is a little disheartening to go all of 18 miles and feel like you’ve just run a marathon. Granted, my legs and stamina are still in their road riding infancy, but none the less I’m in e-mail contact with guys who do 150+ miles a week and I think “damn.”
Enter my job, and how I’m lucky.
I have this great job as a shipping supervisor the Midwestern distribution center of a major electronics retailer. Due to propriorty reason I probably shouldn’t tell you which retailer, but there are so many Circuits in this place it’s like there’s a whole City of them.
Anyhoo, it’s a big place, and with that there’s a big ‘road’ that surrounds it (for all the outbound and inbound trucks). How big? Almost exactly one mile in circumference.
You see where I’m going with this?
I asked my General Manager (who is one of the best bosses in the history of bosses) if I could may stop by on Saturdays (when we don’t ship and therefore have very little truck traffic) and ride the loop.
“Sure” he said, and today I took him up on the offer.
Here’s what I got-
-An open road, with very little traffic (any trucks that come in must obey a 5mph speed limit).
-An almost entirely flat surface. There are a few elevations for water run off but nothing noticeable.
-A track that’s almost exactly one mile.
-Since I’m no more than ½ mile from my stuff, I can strip the bike down to its essentials. No need to lug any tools, cell phone etc.
-Due to the lack of traffic I can listen to that iPod as long as I want.
-Really, not much of a need for a helmet, but I’ll wear one just to stay used to it.
It’s like I got my own personal velodrome.
The only downside is that since it’s an open space the wind is terrible. If the weather states that it’s 5mph, then you should brace for every bit of 15. But it keeps things interesting. The other downside is that the scenery is boring at best, but for once a week, no problems.

I totally floored myself today. I rode for just about 2hrs and did 30 miles exactly. That floors me. 30 miles. May not be mean much to the seasoned guys but I can hardly believe it. I wasn’t really all that winded either; just my legs were giving out. I did some rough climbing the day before so I wasn’t as rested as I should have been. But none the less I’m damned proud of myself. This actually makes me believe that I am perfectly capable of doing a century (but not on this track, I’d instead like to do it the ‘real’ way.) My goal is to gain 10 miles per month. We’ll see huh?

God I love riding.