Cycling on Aman Aniket

Racing

Fri, 25 Aug 2017 00:32:19 +0530

I have never been a racing person. What I have always enjoyed and found challenging though is the ultra aspect of things. Having said that, there’s that thrill you get from speed which is all but a different flavor of the sport. So when The Champions Sportive was announced, which essentially is planned to be a set of 102K competitive races across 8 cities of the country. This is the first edition and Bangalore was the first city to host it. And it didn’t take me more than 2 minutes to register. I was BIB 10'8’, for crying out loud! I had always wanted to try out a competitive race and this sounded like the perfect combination of racing and endurance. And I was not disappointed at all.

Mysore

Sun, 13 Aug 2017 01:26:31 +0530

Ever since I started attempting long distances on the cycle which was roughly at the beginning of 2017, I have always looked for out-and-back destinations which

Have a healthy amount of climb.
Approachable mileage given my current conditioning.

Given my last outing was an around 200k affair, I wanted to really try myself out this time. The last one had been to the Avalabetta peak in the mid-April scorching heat. An out-and-back Mysore trip sounded like a good and doable challenge. Little was I to know the challenges mother nature was about to throw at me. As has been the norm for the TO part, reaching Mysore was a breezy affair and I was in high spirits about being good on the total time.

Being an endurance athlete

Sat, 12 Aug 2017 07:05:40 +0530

I am asked by my mother, “Why do you cycle so much? Planning to go to the US to meet your brother?”. She already thinks bigger than me.

Being one? Guess what, I didn’t decide to be one, one fine day. It just came to me in the form of the beautiful sport of Running. I started running because I had lost touch with any form of activity. I was in sophomore year of college, and running seemed liked the best way to start embarrassing myself lesser when on a weighing scale. It was a couple of years before I came across the idea of a long distance run. It seemed challenging enough and I went for it. There’s been no looking back ever since. But one thing that has remained constant is the challenge. The mental battles you fight during an endurance activity are way more fierce and educative than the physical ones. Those meditative sessions give you a lot of time to introspect and understand yourself better. And there is no dearth of challenges, ever. As soon as you accomplish a goal, an another one will be greeting you with a smug. I’ll leave you with this read that I really liked.

For the love of cycling

Mon, 03 Jul 2017 16:20:21 +0530

The sport of cycling came and stuck to me quite serendipitously putting me on the right track in a lot of aspects.

I still remember the first time I decided I wanted to get a cycle. Things came up to a point where I would not budge or eat anything without getting one. My parents had to give in quickly as they rarely saw this quiet and reserved kid really adamant about something. I still remember that feeling when my dad conned me into believing that he was still holding my back. That ended up with the ever-so-liberating feeling of having to balance myself on my cycle without any supporting wheels! Cycling became a daily activity and my cycle my closest companion. Things moved on as I relocated for my studies and my humble old cycle was somehow left behind… A variety of things ensued which ended in me landing up in a college that was humungous and in the middle of nowhere. What that implied was you had to use cycles for commuting within campus. Cycling came back not as a hobby but as a necessity. The trigger for this passion which was buried deep down came up again while we were researching for an adventure trip to mark our graduation. We came across this 7 day mountain biking trip being organised to an almost obscure range in Himachal and I immediately knew I had to do it! We ended up having a great week out in the serene mountains.

Conquering Avalabetta and more...

Tue, 25 Apr 2017 16:11:34 +0530

Avalabetta is a beautiful hilltop located around 100 kms from Bangalore. It is an ideal place for a short trip with great scenery to offer.

The mountain biking bug first bit me after incidentally joining a YHAI 7 day trip to Jalori Pass. Nearly a year later, I was about to attempt cycling around 200 kms in a day. I had been cycling around 25–30 kms a day for 6 months now so I knew I had the conditioning, but a long stretch of cycling brings a handful of challenges with it, the intense 35 degrees arid weather topping the list for me. Jittery and excited, I tried sleeping off only to wake up at 3 am next morning.