Comment by lumost
1 month ago
> Doing something hard and a little bit scary together strengthens the bond
This can’t be underestimated. Most of my adult friends come from my trekking hobby. Everyone struggles during a trek, group dynamics form, you stay surprisingly close with the people you trekked with.
I used to do long distance cycling with a few friends. We have a ridiculously tight bond around that suffering. So many hours asking each other what the hell we were thinking, and so many hours planning the next trips. We'd do 300, 400, 600km in a go. I miss it, and I miss them.
600km?! at what pace? I've ridden 190km a couple times, but that was a. a long time ago b. took all day. In my defense, it was on a fully-loaded touring bike, but even on a high-spec racing bike I can't imagine cranking (heh) out more than maybe 300km in one go.
For those really long guys we'd manage just 18kph or so. On shorter ones like 200km, we'd average more like mid 20s. I think beyond 300km is where the big shift happened and our average dropped a ton. Though we rode with some guys who had averages in the high 20s, even on 600s or further.
We initially wanted to do a ride in France called Paris-Brest-Paris, but never got good enough. That's a 1200km ride. Then kids happened, careers, etc. I'm too bad at time management for that kind of riding, haha.
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