A Sufferfest You Might Enjoy

I told him I would do my best to keep up. And if I got dropped, I got dropped.

“You will get dropped. In Boulder, everything is notched up,” he continued. “We’re the smartest, fittest, happiest, healthiest, we’re everything here — I’m not making this up, I’m a realtor, so I know these facts. We are objectively the smartest, fittest, happiest…”

Then he tried to put a nice spin on it.

“I don’t want you to suffer,” he said.

“Isn’t that the point of road biking?” I asked.

“I guess so,” he said.

A popular road biking website is called “The Sufferfest.”

I decided to go through with it anyway, on account of me having no brains and needing a monthly outdoors column. I even bought spandex shorts from a thrift store, though I insisted that no photos be taken. I still have childhood friends who are Facebook friends, and I believe they would see those photos and drive to my new house to punch me in the back of the head.

The ride met on a Tuesday evening at Boulder Beer. About 20 pod people gathered in the parking lot. My eye for cool hasn’t changed. The David Duval sunglasses, the styrofoam on their heads, the bulges. Oh my god, the bulges. I know of no sport outside of competitive cabaret in which there are so many bulges: bulges in the back, bulges in the calves, bulges in places where you wish there were no bulges.

Some of the bikers here were kind, though, and welcoming. I met Greg Borchert, 63, a gregarious bike lover. I told him it was my first time seriously road biking, including wearing those clip-in shoes. “You’ll fall,” he told me. “One hundred percent of people fall their first time wearing clip-ins.” (He was wrong. I did not fall on my ride. I fell just after my ride was over.)