He Started Cycling When Gyms Closed Because of COVID-19, and Discovered a Love for Bikepacking
Age: 33
Hometown: Red Deer, Alberta, Canada
Occupation: Morning radio announcer
Time Cycling: 1 year
Start Weight: 430 pounds
End Weight: 300 pounds
Reason for Cycling: I grew up with the Rocky Mountains on the horizon, calling me onward to adventure, like a challenge I could never answer. Cycling gives me the tools and the confidence to take on the adventurous, outdoor lifestyle I’ve been dreaming of my entire life.
Before I started cycling, I was very sedentary and quite depressed. I remember looking at other people’s lives on Instagram with envy. I have lived in Alberta, Canada, near the Rocky Mountains my entire life, so I have a lot of friends who hike, backpack, and go on outdoor adventures all the time. Their spectacular photos and their frequent adventures with friends made me wish I was able to do the same, but my weight prevented me from doing so.
My mobility had really started to suffer, and I began having a lot of problems with my legs. Just going to the grocery store or going up a flight of stairs was becoming a struggle. I would have achy knees that would buckle after a day of doing errands. And to make matters worse, I sprained both my ankles within a year of each other. On top of my weakening legs, I also developed a hernia in my belly button caused by my excess weight. Simply moving through the world on a day-to-day basis was becoming difficult.
In the summer of 2019, I was planning a trip to Victoria, British Columbia, to ask my now wife to marry me. The thought of starting a family finally got me to take my health seriously. I knew that if I struggled to keep up with life now, I wouldn’t stand a chance once we added children to the equation. I also knew I wanted to set a better example if I was to become a father one day. Rather than being the guy on the couch who was jealous of people’s adventures, I wanted to be the one going on them.
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Six weeks before that vacation, I started working with a personal trainer at a local gym, and I started adjusting my eating habits by tracking what I ate using the MyFitnessPal app. I learned that I don’t have to permanently deprive myself of anything; it’s part of my routine now.
By the time I proposed to my wife, I had lost 30 pounds, and by the following spring, I was on my way to losing 100 pounds. Between calorie-tracking and drinking enough water, I’ve seen my health and my relationship with food improve dramatically.
In spring of 2020, I was successfully battling my obesity for the first time in my life after finding a routine that worked. But then gyms closed because of COVID-19, including the one that helped me lose 100 pounds. Determined not to backslide into my old life, with a desire to keep on measuring my success beyond the scale, I found cycling.
I became enamored with endurance cycling and bikepacking specifically. The thought of riding your bike into the wilderness as far as you could possibly go—well, that sounded exactly like the outdoor adventure I’d been craving my entire life. And in the meantime, tracking how far and how fast I could go sounded like exactly the kind of progress tracking I was interested in.
Ryan’s Must-Have Cycling Gear
I love my Surly! Getting into cycling when you’re overweight makes it a bit tricky. Most bikes aren’t built to handle large riders, but Surly bikes are! I was so glad to find a bike that could not only carry me but could handle carrying a bunch of bikepacking gear on top of that. I love my Surly Ogre. I feel like I can go anywhere on that thing and I feel safe doing it.
I have alt bars on both of my bikes, and they are so helpful. Being a larger guy with developing core strength, it can be hard for me to get low enough on the bike to ride drop bars comfortably. Alt bars give me some different seating and hand positions to help keep me comfortable on long rides, but they aren’t difficult to access for a beginner rider such as myself, so it’s easy to feel confident and comfortable using them.
It’s hard to carry a big butt like mine up a mountain on a bike. I couldn’t even imagine doing it without a chamois! Luckily, Aerotech Designs makes cycling clothes in big and tall sizes. There’s not a lot of option out there for bigger riders, so this was like heaven sent for me. They even have gear for all four seasons, so when I wanted to take on fat biking in the Canadian winter, I wasn’t limited by what equipment I could find.
I joined a few of the local Facebook groups for gravel biking and bikepacking, and I looked to their posts for inspiration. I found a few routes that I was particularly interested in doing, and I planned out a couple of big day rides with a few of my friends who were also into endurance biking. I used those day rides as motivation to train.
My ultimate goal for last year was to crack 100km in a single ride, which I managed to do at the end of summer. Along the way we did a huge 85km ride through the Badlands near Drumheller, Alberta. And we did an 83km ride through Kananaskis country that had over 1,000m of climbing. The thought of finishing those rides is what kept me pedaling week in and week out.
This year I have a goal of hitting my first century: 100 miles or 161km. It would be really cool to do that during an official event now that those are starting back up, but I have to get my speed up before I’ll be able to finish fast enough. So this year I’m really trying to improve my speed and endurance by doing longer rides more often. My friends and I have a goal to turn our day rides into epic weekend rides and actually try some bikepacking this summer, and I’d love to do at least one multi-day trip that involves camping for the night.
While the physical strength I’ve built up by riding a bike makes me feel great, the mental strength I’ve found along the way is even greater. Cycling has really put me toe-to-toe with my self doubts in a way I never could have imagined, and it’s given me the tools to overcome it like never before.
My self-doubt is with me on every ride. It's the voice that tells me that I can’t make it up that next hill, that I can’t go as far as I thought I could, that I'm not strong enough to finish this ride. I’ve been plagued by this voice of doubt my whole life. But now thanks to cycling, for the first time in my life I’ve found a way to prove that voice wrong.
Every time I pedal up a hill, I’ve won a little of my confidence back; every time I set a personal best, I win back some of my self esteem; and every time I conquer another adventure, I’ve found another reason to be proud of myself.
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