My Baptism to the Religion of cycling

A little insight on how I got the keeda to cycle. 

My time in Australia, led me to a lot of cycling mainly for the purpose of commuting. There were weekend trail rides but never more than 50 kms. I did a bike maintenance workshop with Cannondale (hence my affection for Cannondale cycles), they also introduced me to some really awesome mountain bikes and terrains to ride them. This was the spark to ignite the cycling passion in me. Sadly, I had to leave my adopted country for homeland!!
  
Back in India, I was looking for a job and applying for PhD was getting boring and monotonous. There was nothing much to do apart from that. So to keep in shape and get over the boredom I started doing medium distance cycling in the September of 2012. I bought myself a kickass MTB, the Cannondale Trail 5 29er. With her extra large wheels and alloy frame shes built like a tank and can take hits like no other. Everyone meet the mile-eater "baby", yes that's her name. 

Baby, at the base of Tikona fort, on one of my 100 km rides.

 I was just another newbie cyclist while trying to distract myself from a bad break up. Cycling was the perfect medicine for me, did wonders to my physical as well as mental health (saved me from depression). I started randonneuring (long distance cycling), touring along with weekend getaways.

My first “long ride” was up Sinhagad n back. Took about an hour to climb it. Came to know later, that it wasn’t really that bad for a newbie cyclist. Next week went to the dreaded Pabe ghat n down the other end towards Velhe and came back to Pune via the Khedshivapur using the highway, a total of 117 km in 10.5 hours (with Parikshit Kulkarni).

At Velhe, base village of Torna fort. Torna can be seen rising exactly behind me. 

  It was something I never even dreamed doing and I never got so tired that I had to get down from the bike. These rides led me to do the 200, 300 n 400 km brevets. My first brevet the 200km; the lavasa lonavala loops, finished it in a strong 10 hour time. In  a month I had improved my cycling a lot.
Then there was also the "tour of Deccan" from Pune to Goa. It would prove to be my first ever trip to Goa n that too on a friggin cycle!! The route was to use all the coast hugging roads along konkan. It was a five day tour with 40 other riders young, small n old!! The tour involved cycling for about a 100 kms everyday for 5 days. It got tougher by each passing day. Saddle sores were showing up and the roads got worse as the scenery got more beautiful.

With all the Tour de Deccan riders at Guhaghar beach

With the going getting tougher each day, many fellow riders started to quit cycling and preferred to sit in the back up vehicle. But me with a very selected few other riders including Ludmila the Russian who I met for the first time on the ride, never quit and completed the whole tour without getting into the back up. Reaching Goa was a bliss. It dint take me long to realise that I was’nt really bad at cycling. Along with all the encouragement from my new found cycling buddies I started to think about taking part in races. 

My first ever cycle race was the 3^rd Pune Bicycle Championship in the October of 2012. It was a hill climb of about approximately 12 kms.  Out on my just 20 day old MTB I managed to finish amongst the top 10. Knowing where I stood was a real eye opener. I started training every day after that. The tour to Goa was child’s play even after riding 100 plus kms for 5 consecutive days.  There was the 400 km brevet in December which was tough but I felt I should increase the difficulty level a bit more. So then I was thinking of taking part in the historical Mumbai – Pune race which was to be held on 13^th February 2013. Problem was, I did not have a road bike until exactly 3 days before the race. It was Dad’s idea for me to take part in the race. Managed to finish in a strong 5 hours despite a crash and injuring my left knee. Later on a podium on the 4th PBCh and a win at the Enduro put me forth as strong rider, got a lot of respect and was a force to reckon with!!!
 One great aspect since taking up cycling was that I managed to inspire a lot more people to take on cycling seriously and manage to mentor a few youngsters, who might be the racers of tomorrow.
I owe a deep sense of gratitude towards Nachiket Joshi, his family, Divya Tate and Ashok Captain for the cyclist i am today. 

Cheers