You might find it inspirational to learn that an 88-year-old man won three gold medals at the Connecticut Senior Games earlier this year.

But the back story for cycling enthusiast Bob Sawyer is so much more amazing than that.

A year earlier, the Bedford, Massachusetts, man had been hospitalized with lymphoma, complicated by pneumonia and the inability to eat because he could not swallow. His doctors had discovered the lymphoma on a CT-scan after he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage.

So there he was in the hospital, wasting away. Everyone, including himself, had started to give up hope ...   more »

Mark Junge wants to prove that he can go on bike tours too, even though he's a daily supplemental oxygen user.

Junge, a retired historian, photographer and writer from Wyoming, is leaving New York City this week for a 816-mile bike tour to Charleston, South Carolina. He expects the bike ride to take about two weeks.

The bike traveler suffers from blood clots in the lungs, a Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease that makes it difficult for him to breath. Instead becoming inactive because of the disorder, however, Junge gets on his bike to motivate others with the condition to go out and live a full life ....   more »

Here are two examples of when you should age-out of bike riding -- never.

First is John Damiano, 80, who just finished up a cross-country bicycle vacation this summer. He told PhillyBurbs.com:

"I wanted to do something totally hard. I wanted to do it to see if an 80-year-old man could ride 3,629 miles."

He can.

Damiano bicycles frequently and has done several long-distance trips. The recent ride from Astoria, Oregon, to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, was his first cross-country adventure ...   more »

Every so often someone will send me an e-mail to learn more about my recovery from prostate surgery.

This weekend, it is 72-year-old Peter Kierulf of Norway. He wrote that he's going in for prostate surgery on Monday. He'd like to hear from other men who have undergone the minimally invasive robotic procedure, and he wants to know how long before they started bicycling again.

That fact that doctors have judged it safe to perform surgery on Peter is a testament to his health and fitness -- probably from his years on the bike. But I can relate to his anxiety....   more »

It's inspiration time.

When getting passed by an elderly bicyclist in the state of Missouri, you should check the back of his shirt as he flies past. If it says, "You've just been passed by an 80-year-old man," then that's Charles Brinkmeyer.

An active cyclist for the past 20 years, Brinkmeyer recently celebrated his 80th birthday with an 80-mile ride ...   more »

Forget about the dishes in the sink. Forget about mowing the lawn and posting your blog. Forget about sleep. If you had 24 hours, how far could you ride your bicycle?

More than 400 bicyclists met at the National 24-Hour Challenge last weekend near Grand Rapids, Michigan, to seek the answer to that question. It was the 24th meeting for the event.

Seattle resident Craig Ragsdale, 29, learned he could set the course record by covering 502.6 miles. Just as amazing, 67-year-old Dave Thomsen of Austin, Minnesota, bicycled 403.9 miles. ...   more »

If you're looking for inspiration to get on the bike, look no further than Bill Anderson.

The 81-year-old cyclist from Yuma is pedaling the 2,000-mile perimeter of Arizona over the next two weeks to raise money for Yuma's Crossroads Mission, a charity for the homeless.

This would be quite a feat for someone half his age, but for Anderson it's pretty much par for the course. The former boxer, WWII vet and construction executive is an excellent example of how a lifetime of exercise can keep someone active for many years. ...   more »

Mikhail Davenport sets out this weekend to cycle 950 miles across Texas in 25 days.

No, it isn't a torrid pace. But the 58-year-old Texan is riding from El Paso to Beaumont on a hand-crank trike towing a trailer with his wheelchair.

Calling it the Legless Lizard Tour de Tejas, Davenport wants to raise awareness for disability issues currently in front of the state Legislature -- such as the state's claims of immunity in not following regulations of the Americans with Disabilities Act   more »

Searching for inspiration? Look no further than this story sent in by a reader about Guy Spear. You'll never again complain that it's too hot, too cold, or too windy for a bicycle ride.

Spear is a 68-year-old cyclist from North Carolina who regularly rides his bike about 100 miles a week. He lost his lower left leg 13 years ago when he was struck by a car, and now rides using a prosthesis, at right.

In a story in the Winston-Salem Journal, Spear says:

"Getting back on the bike wasn't hard. ... I guess you just do your thing and keep on going. I never got depressed or anything about it." ...   more »

American cyclist Tyler Hamilton competed in his first professional bicycling race on Tuesday since being accused of blood doping in the fall of 2004 during the Vuelta a Espana.

Hamilton rode in the one-day French season opener, the Grand Prix d'Ouverture La Marseillaise, as leader of the Russian Tinkoff Credit Systems cycling team. Teammate Mikhail Ignatiev finished second; Hamilton finished out of the top 15.

Hamilton lost his final appeal of the blood doping case last year ...   more »

What's one activity that is growing among Americans 45 years and older, while it declines among the population as a whole? Bicycle riding.

The finding is in a report entitled "Global Aging and Sports: The Impact of Aging of the World's Population on the World of Sports." It was prepared by The Consilience Group, LLC, for SBRnet, a Princeton, New Jersey-based sports marketing research firm.

I'm a little surprised in the findings that bicycling has declined among the population as a whole since the early 1990s. However, the National Bicycle Dealers Association reports that the peak participation year for cycling was 1992 with 54.6 million participants. The most recent estimates available are for 2002, when 41.4 million Americans took to their bicycles. Sales figures, however, show steady growth. ...   more »

Pennsylvanian Don Moul will celebrate his 90th birthday along the rail-to-trail bicycle path where he rides four or five times a week.

How are you going to stay fit when you're 90?

Moul has been an avid bicyclist since he retired in the 1980s. Currently he likes to ride his bicycle on a 15-mile route from York to Glen Rock along the Heritage Rail Trail County Park ...   more »

While it might seem funny that there are adults who don't know how to ride a bike, apparently there are people who are afraid to ride because of some childhood trauma. They're afraid, but they still want to try it.

The Bicycle Riding School in Somerville, Massachusetts, is the only place I've heard of that teaches adults how to get over their fear of falling off their bikes. Nearly 2,000 people have learned to ride bikes there in the past 20 years.

There are many bicycling clinics that teach adults how to safely ride in traffic or improve their skills in road racing or mountain biking. What the Bicycle Riding School does is teach adults how to get over their phobia. ...   more »

When bicyclist Joe Kern explained his ability to ride 80 miles on his 80th birthday, he credited a proper bike fit as being one of the major reasons for his longevity in the saddle.

We all probably have a cursory knowledge of bike fit. Primarily it involves saddle height and handlebar reach, but pedal and shoe alignment also comes into play.

If the bike fit is right, we can ride efficiently for hours on end with little or no discomfort. If wrong, we suffer neck, back and knee pain, sore arms and shoulders and numb hands.

Cycling becomes a pain in the butt.

The American Physical Therapy Association is focusing on proper bike fit this month. Erik Moen of Seattle, an association member and an elite cycling coach with the US Cycling Federation, says he first looks to improper bike fit as the culprit when patients complain of cycling related aches and pains.

He recommends the following tips for better bike fit ...

When Joe Kern turned 80 back in July, he commemorated his birthday with an 80-mile bicycle ride. How did you celebrate your 40th birthday, or 50th for that matter?

Kern lives in Metropolis, Illinois, located not far down river from where the TransAmerican bicycle trail crosses the Ohio at Cave-In-Rock. He belongs to the Carbondale Bicycle Club and often joins such regional bike rides as the Tour de Cape. ...   more »

Seventy-year-old Sean Sweeney had a unique way of training for his latest bicycle tour from Montana to Alaska -- he hauled sand.

The Adventure Cycling Association bike tour was his fourth long-distance tour since he bicycled cross country in 2002. To prepare for this 3,330-mile trek, he carried 50 pounds of sand in a BOB trailer up and down the Baltimore & Annapolis Trail in Maryland. ...   more »

Bill Cook's cross-country bicycle adventure ended in Washington, D.C., this week.

The 70-year-old retired journalist's 3,248-mile recumbent bike tour ended 49 days after it started in Seattle, where he left with a supported tour organized by the Adventure Cycling Association. ...   more »

Joe Bowen, a very fit Kentucky cyclist, pedaled off on a 14,000-mile bicycle tour last spring to visit nearly every state in the US -- a second time.

Bowen was repeating a bicycle trek he took upon his discharge from the Air Force in 1967 when he left Lompoc, California, and bicycled through 46 states before returning home to eastern Kentucky.

Now, at 63, Bowen is returning home again ...   more »

The record-setting around-the-world bicycle life-journey of Heinz Stücke has come to a dead stop in Portsmouth, UK, where his bike was stolen this week.

This is not any old bike. This three-speed is the one Stücke has ridden to nearly every country on Earth since he embarked on the 335,000 journey from his home in Germany in 1962. ...   more »

A 57-year-old former phys ed teacher has finished her 800-mile ride from Evansville, Indiana, to Eunice, Louisiana.

It's not a bike ride that follows any established bicycle routes. But it was the most direct route from Becky Jones' home to the small Louisiana town that nearly doubled its population with evacuees from last fall's hurricanes. ...   more »

How are you going to celebrate your 100th birthday? Clair Duckham went for a bike ride.

The 100-year-old resident of an assisted living center in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, hit the road stoking a tandem on a 5-mile ride through nearby Wheaton. ...   more »

Bill Wilcox's day usually includes a 10- to 20-mile bike ride. That's how the retired West Virginian engineer stays in shape to ride RAGBRAI this summer.

Wilcox, 75, of Shepherdstown has ridden the 500-mile, week-long Iowa bike tour for the past 12 years. He usually rides with this two son's-in-law, although he has biked it alone -- just Wilcox and 10,000 to 12,000 other bicycle enthusiasts. ...   more »

What do you do if you're 60 and suffer a brain aneurysm that renders you without the ability to read or write?

If you're Megan Timothy, left, you work hard for two years to recover your lost ability to communicate, write a book, sell it to a publisher and climb on a touring bicycle to make a cross-country book promotion tour.

"Because I've always been an adventurer, I'm going on this little adventure to prove myself whole again." ...   more »

"You reach the top of a mountain pass … it’s real … it does something to you. Humping up a steep 1,000-foot elevation with 40 pounds of gear, it’s hard. You’ve accomplished something. And there’s still all this country there before you.”   more »