I was a cyclist in college, mostly as a way to get around. The University of Hawai’i has awful parking in the area, and I had a part time job off campus a few miles away. The only way to get to and from quickly was on a bike.

For whatever reason, I had gotten away from cycling for awhile after I was done with graduate school. I was never thin, but when I started my current job back in the mid 1990s, I was weighing 235 pounds, which I thought was “okay” for my 5’10” frame. I played basketball a couple of times a week, and I lifted weights from time to time until I injured my shoulder. But I was still pretty young (not quite 30 at the time). As the years added up, so did the weight.

When I got diagnosed in 2002, the thought of cycling hit me again. Not right away, but it seemed like it would be a way to help me lose weight. I still had my bikes, although they needed quite a bit of work. I started working riding into my routine, but slowly.

I bought an old Cannondale off of one of my coworkers at the hospital in early 2005. I decided that it was time for me to ride on the road again (I have a mountain bike with slick tires I’d been riding for awhile). It was my second Cannondale. It was light and stiff and beat me up a lot while riding, but we got to know each other really well. I fixed it up with a bunch of old parts: Suntour bar end shifters in friction mode, Shimano 600EX aero brakes and single pivot calipers, and Shimano 600 Ultegra cranks. It was a 14 speed that I put pretty wide ranging gears onto; at this point my cycling present and future was much more tourist than racer.

My goal was to do the Honolulu Bicycling League Century. One hundred miles of riding in one day. I’d done it before, but to do it again, I would need a plan.