I rode my 2005 Specialized Allez for the first time this season today. It felt really strange having spent the last ten months or so riding my triathlon bike. As I was flipping through the screens on my bike computer, I noticed that the odometer was at somewhere over 18,600 miles.
Now, I’d say I ride a pretty decent amount, but I know there are people who ride a lot more than me. Nonetheless, 18,600 miles is a damn lot of miles. Eighteen thousand gahdamn miles! And most of the components are original, too.
This bike has seen a lot.
I did my first road race on it, in East Lansing, while in grad school.
I rode parts of stages 14 and 15 of the 2007 Tour de France through the Pyrenees Mountains on it.
It carried me all over Northern Spain for a summer.
I did my first IRONMAN in Lake Placid on it.
It accompanied me in my ascent from a total newbie, Cat. 5 bike racer, to a more seasoned Cat. 3
It survived, somehow with barely a scratch, a pileup of a crash in a group sprint in the final meters of the Tour of Mount Pleasant.
It knows the roads of Leelanau County like nowhere else.
And now has a pretty good feel for the roads of the greater Portland area.
Here’s to 18,000 more miles.