Two years ago I was a plodder and didn't even have a road bike. This year I set two cross-state records (60+ age group "geezer" category). What happened in those two years?

Going back a bit, bicycling was at best an intermittent activity. I had done some century rides with my wife on a tandem, but that was over 20 years ago. The last time I had ridden a solo century was 30 years ago, in 1976.

Drew Clark is cheerful despite the heat during his Indiana cross-state bicycle record.

I had a background in competitive distance running, but a long battle with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) put an end to my competitive running in the mid-1980's. A decade of struggle with CFS ensued. In an attempt to keep my fitness at a high level, I started commuting by bicycle to my teaching job in the mid 1990's. I used a mountain bike to make the 17-mile commute (34 miles round trip) for the last seven years of my career. I did get a pretty good mileage base, but my training was wrong for any kind of record attempt (which had not even crossed my mind then). Instead of the ultramarathon ideal of riding long and fast and refreshed, I was training myself to ride short and slow and fatigued, since I sandwiched two rides around a 10-hour day.

However, more important than the mileage base was the discipline base. I made it my goal to ride every school day without missing a day. And in 2003, I did just that. My wife says I am stubborn. I counter that I am focused, not stubborn. The hardest day of the year was a day when the roads were icy, it was pitch dark at 5:30 a.m., headwinds were blowing, there was continuing snow, and it was five below. Focused. (But not stubborn.)

So how, and why, did I make the transition to setting cross-state records?

I retired in June 2004. My twice-daily 17-mile ride became a once a day 30-mile ride. This really fatigued me at first because I was so habituated to a 17-mile ride. Then I gradually took longer rides, sometimes as long as 40 or 50 miles! Still no road bike though.

I finally got a road bike in fall 2004; a Giant OCR1. What a dream compared to the mountain bike!

I started taking weekend rides with local bike clubs. I rode on a Populaire ride organized by Rocky Mountain Cycling Club. That began the chain of events that led to cross-state records. Carol Chaffee led the ride and she smoked me. (She still can.) Shortly after that, Chaffee set the record for Colorado South-North. This fascinated me so much, I found the UMCA website and I was hooked.

Drew Clark starts a rainy record attempt across Illinois.

I connected with another club, Louisville Velo Club. Their weekend rides went at a pretty stiff pace for me then. (Still do, actually.) These rides became my interval workouts without me even realizing it at first.

Intentionality seeped into my rides. I started riding smarter. Stress and Recovery replaced Stress, Stress, Stress, Stress, and Stress. When commuting, I never rode hard enough to improve my speed, but I never rode easy enough to recover, so I just accumulated fatigue all week and rested all weekend. Now I had to force myself to take some easy recovery rides in between the harder rides.

I ordered several back copies of UltraCycling and soaked up the articles on training and nutrition. I sought out local experts such as Fred Boethling and John Lee Ellis. (What a gift to have such experience close at hand!)

I picked two states for record attempts, Illinois and Indiana, because I grew up in the Midwest. Also, compared to Colorado, these states are flat and have real oxygen in the air! I set dates in June for the attempts.

But then came the obstacles. In March, out of the blue, I was hit with blood clots in my lungs. Serious clots. Both lungs. Pass-out-cold-on-the-floor pain. Ambulance to the hospital. Stabilized. Sent home a few days later. Pain returned. Another ambulance trip to the hospital. My lungs were so compromised that I needed five liters of oxygen per minute just to walk to the bathroom and brush my teeth. Parts of my lungs were necrotic (dead).

For a while I lost my focus. I thought the dream died. But my recovery was miraculous. By the end of March, I was back up to 30 miles a day. My motto: "It is not what you have lost that matters. What matters is how you use what you have left."

I increased the mileage of my long rides until I was doing the distance of my planned attempts and could still recover easily.

Physical training is only one part of a record attempt. I had to attend to the logistics of the attempt by locating an official, enlisting a crew, and finding a support vehicle. Focus came into play again.

Clark sets the age 60-69 Indiana bicycle record in 8 hours 2 minutes.

Finally, ride day arrived. June 11. Illinois. Cool, rainy, headwinds. But I got the record. Later that week, June 17. Indiana. Crosswinds, temperatures near 90. And I got another record.

I do make a few concessions to age. Due to a stiff neck from an old injury and some hearing loss, I use a rear view mirror to monitor traffic from behind. Some of the pure roadies in the Velo Club occasionally poke fun at my large mirror, but as long as I can see them in the mirror, they don't laugh too loud. I also have geezer gearing. Even though I have a triple chainring, I changed my cassette from a 12-26 to a 12-34 and added an XT mountain bike rear derailleur to accommodate the capacity. So I have lots of low gears and I use them all.

I got a lot of good advice and followed lots of it, but not all of it. The rule that overrides all others is: I ride my bike because it is fun.