Fitness

Prologue: For me, this story begun on August 24, 2016 – the day I was hit by a pickup truck on a rural Virginia road.  I was left with a broken clavicle and thumb and a totalled bike.  The recovery took months, as did my comfort of riding on roads with cars again.  It was…

Two weeks ago, I was riding my bicycle on one of my standard training rides when a pickup truck hit me on a local road. I was about a foot from the white line and the truck’s mirror smacked me in the shoulder blade. I was taken to the ER in an ambulance and now…

Prologue: When my brother Pat was a priest in Aurora, Colorado, a parishioner named Steve O’Leary introduced him to bicycling.  In November of 1992, Pat came home for Thanksgiving with a VHS tape of a bicycle tour he just did with Steve called Ride the Rockies.  It seemed unreal that normal people with day jobs…

Prologue: Ride the Rockies is a high endurance bicycle tour that pushes most riders to their limits, exposing them to extremes in distance, temperature, and mountain climbs.  In the end, riders are filled with a profound sense of accomplishment and are left with an experience they will never forget,  Sponsored by the Denver Post Foundation,…

The photos and video in this make me even more excited to do the ride. However, all the extracurricular activities is silly – when you get back after a hard day of riding, all you really care about is eating and getting sleep!

Fundraising page: http://fundraise.worldbicyclerelief.org/michael-obrien On June 13-20, I will be doing my sixth Ride the Rockies.  This year is unquestionably the most difficult – it is just under 500 miles and has 40,000 feet of climbing, requiring training nearly every day until the ride starts. However this year, I wanted to make the ride more meaningful so…