Lewis hits road for children

Helping children is more important to Lewis Smith than the callouses, sore muscles, wind, hills and crazy drivers he will encounter this summer as he rides a bicycle 400 miles across 19 western counties to raise money for Baptist Children's Homes of North Carolina.

Smith, for 28 years a pastor in North and South Carolina has been on the development staff for BCH since 2004 and is securing sponsors for his ride in hopes of raising $50,000.

This is an especially bold move for Smith because he is not a cyclist. At least, he wasn't, until he started training his sit bones and quads for this ride.

He is not riding straight through, but will ride and speak at churches, Vacation Bible Schools and special gatherings to tell people about the ministry North Carolina Baptists offer to children and their families. He will take a week off between segments of the ride to continue his development work, then mount the saddle again for the next leg. His wife, Sherry, will drive a support vehicle.

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Posted by jameson ( Apr 16 2008, 08:16:53 PM EDT ) Permalink

Test Yourself

My mountain bike rides are of a pretty consistent length, mostly 60-90 minutes. You don't really calculate time and distance on the trails, because riding in the woods is more about navigating roots, ruts, creeks and plodding horses.

On the road bike though, with hard pavement and handy little odometers, you can calculate distance, average time, highest achieved speed, total time, etc. Fancy ones even record your heart rate which you can download to your computer to graph over your course.

In September I rode with my oldest son who lives near Philadelphia. We left his house in Wayne and rode through "Valley Forge National Park" out to a path along the Schuylkill River and into downtown Philly. We rode around the "Philadelphia Museum of Art" and parked for a snack at the top of the steps made famous by Rocky Balboa.

All through lunch young people ran the steps, assumed "the pose" for friends' cameras, and slouched back down. A wedding party made their portrait with the city as background.

Nathan and I had ridden 42 miles by that point and I was ready to be done. However, the first unwritten rule of riding is that you must return to your starting point.

It was my first time on the route and I did not know how far it was back to Wayne. I hoped our return route was much shorter. As soon as left our perch where we had enjoyed a rare moment that can never be scheduled, we encountered the second unwritten rule of riding: the wind will be against you both ways.

Riding in front, Nathan "pulled" me up some hills, encouraged me and set a pace that I struggled mightily to match. It was a beautiful late summer day, crisp, sunny and dry, pungent with the nostalgic decay of leaves that lost their will to hang on.

After riding up out of the river valley, I had no more will to hang on than those leaves. But I kept clinging.

By the gasping end, we had covered 60 hilly miles over four hours and I was bursting with achievement.

The following week, back in the woods on my mountain bike, I felt motorized. I took every hill one or two gears higher than usual and ate the trail like locusts through wheat.

On what plateau are you stuck? To move to a higher level in your normal tasks you must occasionally smash through the barriers that define your "normal." If you ride an hour, ride two. If you lift 10, lift 20, even if you have to rest in the middle. If you forgive seven times, forgive 70 times seven.

When you smash through the barrier, you redefine your "normal" to a higher plane and actions that now take maximum effort will seem routine.

Posted by jameson ( Oct 08 2007, 09:12:00 PM EDT ) Permalink