Chapter One: Gonna Take My Bike. Gonna Ride It Slowly.

When I was in 4th grade, I fell off my bike and fractured my left radius and ulna (the two bones that make up the forearm). When I would tell my classmates about how I broke my arm, I would embellish some of the details by saying that an older kid knocked me off my bike, but that is not what happened. I was going too fast down a gentle hill, lost control when I braked, and biffed it when my back tire came out from underneath me. I walked my bike back home, told my parents I broke my arm, and then took a nap in the living room.

In 6th grade, I upgraded from a children’s bike to a Huffy Helios 15-speed mountain bike, at a time when all the other kids in the neighborhood rode BMX style bicycles, I preferred the practicality of a mountain bike¹. I am sure that this preference was based entirely on self-preservation because, as I stated in “Prologue,” I have always been prone to embarrassing injuries.

I would ride this bike to and from baseball, football, and school for as long as the weather permitted. In the summer, I would race my mom home from the swimming pool. I would be Helios himself, knuckles white upon the reins of my chariot of dawn, and she would be driving a Mercury Sable, possibly unaware that she was involved in a race at all, which was probably my most significant advantage.

In 8th grade, the unthinkable happened. A scofflaw stole my bike. I had accidentally left it parked in the bike corral overnight when I accepted a ride home from basketball practice, forgetting that I had my own means of conveyance. We filed a police report, but I never saw that bike again.

After my freshman year of college, I purchased a Trek 3700 21-speed mountain bike, in what would be my first half-hearted attempt at losing weight. It rarely got used. I would ride it to work over the summer; then it went into mothballs for a couple of years. My roommates would use it more frequently than I would. Between 2010 and 2018, I only rode it a handful of times. During this time, it mostly collected dust, cobwebs, and rust.

When I returned from my trip to see Phish in Colorado, on Labor Day weekend of 2018 (See Prologue), I took my first step toward being more active. I loaded my derelict Trek 3700 into my Prius and took it to Main Street Bicycles in Carpentersville, Illinois, for a tune-up, which turned out to be roughly $200 worth of repairs², because everything needed repair. The fork was broken, the brakes were useless, and the gearing system was a mess.

One of my favorite things about where I live in West Dundee is that there is easy access to the Fox River Bike Trail. The Fox River Bike Trail (Henceforth: “The Fox Trail”) is a 40-mile bike trail that runs from Algonquin to Aurora and connects to a myriad of other bike trails, including the Great Western Trail and the Prairie Path. With this trail in mind, I set my first fitness goal: I was going to ride from my apartment in West Dundee to my friend’s house in St Charles by the end of 2018, in what would be a 32-mile roundtrip ride. (Spoiler – It did not happen.)

The expression “It’s just like riding a bike” turns out to be incredibly accurate. I got on for the first time in over five years, and there was pretty much nothing I had to relearn. I say “pretty much” because I used to be adept at riding with no hands. I no longer had the necessary balance to do this. My inability to ride without holding on to the handlebars notwithstanding, on September 5th, I packed my bag with 24 ounces of water, a first aid kit, my insurance card, and my phone just in case I need to call 911 (or an Uber, more realistically), and I headed to the Fox Trail.

My heart was pounding, my quads were screaming, and sweat was pouring down my face by the time I got to the path (0.5 miles), but I was determined to press on. My goal for this first ride was to make it to I-90 (4 miles round trip), and I made it. I did stop halfway through for a drink of water, and a selfie to show the world that I had accomplished something. Also it took me nearly 40 minutes, break included, but I did it — I rode my bike 4 miles.

The next day it felt like someone had punched me in the coccyx repeatedly. I walked with a noticeable limp, and I could barely sit, but that didn’t deter me from going for another ride. This time I rode right past I-90, wincing with each bump, and made it to Pratt’s Castle, a castle that has no business being located on the north end of Elgin and was built for the sole purpose of storing some eccentric’s medieval antiquities collection. This ride was nearly 5 miles round trip! But when I got back to my apartment, my legs were made of jello, and I could barely climb the three flights of stairs. I did not ride the next day.

I have a friend who has lived in the Elgin area for nearly is entire life, and when I told him about my bicycle excursions into his city, he was more than willing to tell me about all the landmarks to which I needed to ride. Each site would be a little bit further from my apartment than the last. By September 21st, I was able to ride 13 miles at a 10 MPH clip. I made it to the very north end of South Elgin, where the Fox Trail and Prairie Path diverge (or converge, depending on your perspective).

My first “I screwed up” moment occurred on October 8th. Hitherto unknown to the author, the Fox Trail gets hilly³ as soon as you get into South Elgin from the north — too hilly for me at this point. But I had set a goal of 17 miles for this particular ride, and I was not about to let a little thing like a few gently rolling hills stop me from achieving this goal.

When I got to my turnaround point, I took a few sips of water and started back. This time I would be going uphill more often that I would be going downhill. I was 5-miles from home when my knee started hurting. It was a sharp pain that only hurt when I extended my knee. So I lowered my seat and eventually made it home, but the damage was done. I had an injured knee.

I went for a 13-mile ride a few days later, but there was still discomfort, especially when riding uphill. It was then I knew that I was done riding for the season. I did not achieve my goal of 32 miles, and I did not even come close.

The “Tom Iftner Manual for Living with Defeat: First Edition” consists of one step: acceptance.

What is the point of doing anything in which you do not immediately excel? I would rather spend my time and energy on things I knew that I could do well, or better yet, required no effort at all.

I mentioned in my previous entry that I lost 40 pounds in 2013, just to put it all back on. The reason I stopped exercising in 2013 was that I have a history of breaking my left foot. It started in junior high track, and it occurred twice in high school cross country. After the Harvard Milk Run 10k in 2013, I felt a familiar discomfort in my left foot and stopped running to prevent exacerbating it. When the pain subsided, I did not resume running.

This time instead of accepting failure, I got to work on revising my manual.

Step One: Identify what went wrong
Step Two: Adapt

I got a gym membership at Dundee Township Park District ($360 annually). It would be six months before I rode my bike again. These six months would feel like one-hundred years.

On October 26,27, and 28th, I saw Phish in Rosemont, Illinois, and I did not have to sit once. If you will recall, I attended six other Phish concerts previously in the year, and could not manage to stand for the entirety of a single one of them.

On October 30th, I stepped on a scale for the first time since August. I was 256 pounds.

Labor Day Weekend 2018 – 280 lbs
October 30th, 2018 – 256 lbs.

¹ Illinois is the second flattest state in America, making mountain bikes pretty impractical.
² I am going to keep a running tally of how much money I have spent on fitness since September 2018. September 5th – October 28th: $560
³ Once again, Illinois is the second flattest state.