Going the Distance

By John Boel

Know anybody who bikes 100 to 200 miles a day, and stops only for Quarter Pounders and fries? I do. And if Lance Armstrong hears about this, it may change the way he tackles the Tour.  Forget about that movie "Supersize Me."  Michael Terkula is the living screenplay for something you might call "Super-Cycle Me."

Terkula is 37 years old and he bikes about four days a week to work.  I thought only people in China really did that.  But Terkula cruises 17 miles, one way, from his home in Goshen to his workplace at Humana.  His Specialized Allez gets hundreds of miles per gallon of Gatorade, and makes the Hybrids look like Hummers.

Terkula recently completed a typical jaunt for him. He biked to North Carolina in just two days.  That's 400 miles of meandering through something called The Great Smoky Mountains.

"Each year I have to have some kind of motivational goal to get in shape, and my sister has a cottage in North Carolina ," says Terkula, explaining why he does these things.

"I plotted a map and realized I had to cross the Great Smoky Mountains to get there, so I put together a training regimen."

Basically, he biked to Shelbyville, Danville , Knoxville , and after passing through Tired-ville, otherwise known as the Smokies, he finished in Sylva, North Carolina .

He planned to cover the 400 miles in three days.  He threw the plan out the window the first night when, after covering 215 miles in 13 hours, he tried to find a hotel room.   The problem is, Wartburg , Tennessee only had one inn and it was booked. When that happened to Mary and Joseph a couple thousand years ago, they found a stable.  When it happened to Michael, he slept outdoors behind a hospital.

"I plodded around town until I found a spot that looked reasonably safe, so I thought a hospital might work all right.  I went to the only store open in town, a grocery store, bought a sponge for a pillow and a three-pack of paper towels to wrap myself up in a pseudo-blanket.  I camped under a stairway going out to a parking lot and got four to five hours of sleep."

After a wretched night like that, you might think Terkula would be hankering for some solid cycling nutrition.  Not so.

"This is the part that's unconventional," he says.  "I eat a lot of Pop tarts on the way.  And I'll actually stop at McDonald's and eat a Quarter Pounder and large fry.  It's not necessarily that bad."

Was it bad food, or bad luck, that contributed to his next problem?

"Leaving McDonald's, my tire exploded on me."

But thanks to a tailwind (no, not caused by what you're thinking), Terkula regrouped and finished his trek on the second day.  The high point of his trip?  Well, the highest point of the trip, of course:  Newfound Gap, elevation 5,048 feet.

"I was pleasantly pleased that people were honking horns at me going up the mountain.  Kind of gave me the feeling I was in France , doing the great Tour.  It took me two hours to bike the 15 miles to the top.  But when I got there, a bunch of people congratulated me and offered me water and one lady offered me a bologna sandwich, which I was more than happy to take."

Goshen to Carolina in two days is nothing for Terkula.  He crossed the entire country in 32 days once with a group called America by Bicycle. They averaged 110 miles per day, with one rest day in Kansas .  That's basically doing the bike portion of the Ironman triathlon every day for a month.

When you're biking from Los Angeles to Boston , you have to be ready for anything.

"Each day was always a memorable day and scenery would change so dramatically.  I could be in the desert in Arizona one day and then I could be in the mountains near Flagstaff the next day, where there's a huge elevation and temperature change."

And when you're biking a hundred miles a day, there's a lot of time to learn about life.

"You get an education on life.  You talk about everything, from religion to politics to children and grandchildren, to whatever's going on.  It gives you a lot of time to talk."

The more Michael Terkula bikes, and the longer he travels, the more perspective he gains on fitness.

"The most important thing is knowing your own body, and knowing when you can push and when to rest.  When I was in my 20s I wasn't smart enough to know that.  I'd just go beat myself to a pulp and wonder why my knees are sore."

My knees are sore just listening to him.  But I also get an injection of youthful enthusiasm when I listen to his matter-of-fact plans of attack and accomplishment. And when I ask him what his next trip will be, he says, "I don't know, got any ideas?"

I have to be careful in my response, because whatever destination I toss out, he'll probably do.

As far as my plans, I'm going to pack a sponge and some Pop Tarts and hit the road on my softride.  The good news is: no matter which direction I take, there's sure to be golden arches, serving up nutritious Quarter Pounders to all of us cross-country cyclists.

John Boel is a 41-time Emmy winning news anchor at WLKY-TV. He's married, has two daughters and is an avid runner and triathlete.