Impelled to pedal

Thinking about a long ride for a good cause this fall? Start training now

Before January, Diane Reynolds hadn't been on a bike since her 10-speed was stolen at Indiana University in the mid-1980s.

When she climbed back into the saddle, more than 20 years later, her goal wasn't just to take an occasional ride on the greenway. She wanted to ride 150 miles in two days by early September.

One hundred fifty miles -- roughly the distance from Raleigh to Morehead City -- may seem like a daunting distance to someone who hasn't been on a bike in years. But as daunting physical tasks go, Brian Beatty says, it's one of the more doable.

"You don't need to have a background to ride," says Beatty, a physical therapist who runs Balanced Physical Therapy with partner Rob Schnieder in Carrboro. "It's one of the most friendly things you can do from a body standpoint because there's no impact."

And now is the time to begin training.

Reynolds' motivation is an increasingly common one for local newbie cyclists who want to pedal long distance: the MS 150 Magical Mystery Bike Tour, a benefit bike ride out of New Bern. Begun in 1988, the ride grew more popular in the late 1990s. That was about the time the Eastern North Carolina Chapter of the MS Society changed the ride from a Raleigh-to-the-coast affair, with an overnight in Kinston, to a New Bern-based event with different loop rides both days. It was also about the time Lance Armstrong brought cycling into the American psyche, launching a boom. The number of road cyclists grew 28 percent from 1999 to 2005, according to the Outdoor Industry Association.

"We don't keep specific figures on the number of people who get into cycling by training for the MS 150," says Mendi Nieters, director of development for the society's eastern chapter. But 560 of the 1,300 cyclists in last year's MS 150 hadn't done the ride before, and a fair share of the new riders, she knows through anecdotal evidence, took up cycling to participate in the event.

After her first big road ride Saturday -- a 32-miler that officially kicked off the MS 150 training season -- Reynolds would agree. To an extent.

"I was really pleasantly pleased at how my legs felt," Reynolds said Monday morning from her office at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. "My legs aren't as sore as I thought they'd be."

Which isn't to say she wasn't feeling at least one lingering effect from the ride.

Pedaling perseverance

Leslie Dare was in Diane Reynolds' cycling shoes last year. She hadn't been on a bike in 25 years, since junior high. Her brother-in-law, Bob Bryan, who had just signed on as president of the MS Society's Eastern Chapter, encouraged her to ride.

Actually, Dare was in Reynolds' shoes two years ago, but that attempt at becoming an endurance cyclist didn't take.

First came her inaugural outing with clipless pedals (pedals that lock in to cycling shoes) during which she forgot she was fastened to her pedals and, hence, her bike. Only when she came to a full stop did she remember. Unable to separate, Dare says, "I fall completely over and the handlebars drive full-force into my chest. I think the gearshift is still embedded."

The three broken ribs from that incident didn't stop her; the broken arm suffered in a fall two weeks later did.

But a year and a half later, Dare was bringing up the rear of the first day's ride. "Family and friends were waiting for me -- and hoping I'd finish before dark and before all the food was gone from the dinner buffet. I had practiced my 'line' for the last 20 miles; as soon as I crossed the line and stopped the bike, I announced, 'I need a beer, a Percocet and a wheelchair, in that order.' "