By Christopher Cudworth

Despite all our best efforts, at times running and riding can get a little stale. We choose the same routes. Run the same pace. Join the same groups or people.

We need a little adventure to break us out of the rut.

Earlier this summer, while planning a move for my daughter out to college in Rock Island, it occurred to me that it would be fun to ride at least part of the way home. The entire trip from the Quad Cities back home would be 120 miles. I didn’t think I was up for all that, although many people are. I am friends with a rider who contested the state record for the trip from Lake Michigan out to the Mississippi and back, some 300 miles total in a day. That’s more than an adventure. That’s a commitment.

An adventure needs to comprise equal elements of fun and spontaneity, challenge and diversity. So I had my daughter drop me off in Dixon, Illinois, about 75 miles from home by calculation of Google Maps, which I printed out because I decided not to use a smartphone for my little adventure.

That meant I nearly missed a turn. But you see, that’s part of an adventure. The sense that you don’t have everything positively, absolutely under your control.

My brother-in-law is a former cyclist who marveled at my willingness to ride back through rural areas without a support plan. Well, I did text my progress to a few people as part of the adventure. Their return texts and ability to follow along on the computer was fun for them as well. An adventure is meant to be shared in some way.

It was fun cruising the back roads. As it turned out the wind was from the east, a rarity in Illinois, and that meant riding into a headwind the whole way. That kept the pace and my cadence honest. The journey could not be hurried, therefore I stopped to eat a Power Bar here, snap a photo there. Keeping a record of your journey also makes it feel like more of an adventure.

Arriving home felt like I’d really done something, and been somewhere. It was fun to ride half way across Illinois, but not engage in some manic attempt that was way out of my personal range. There are days and times for that. But an adventure should also make you feel good about what you did, not regret that you ever did it.

My friends and I also ride to Lake Geneva each year, another trip of about 75 miles. Our wives meet us up with us in a van to bring the bikes home. We swim, drink a few beers with good eats at a bar called Chuck’s and drive back home together.

The cool thing about the Lake Geneva adventure route is there’s a little history there. A map of a course of back roads has been laminated and shared over the years by numerous cyclists. Some of those roads are so obscure you can’t find them on some maps. Others are dodgy and potholed, riddled with tarsnakes or weeds. That makes you ride mindfully, and appreciate the nicely smooth roads you ride for most of the journey. It’s a little like a cyclist’s Lord of the Rings. The eye of Mordor is the heat, humidity, rain or wind you encounter along the way.

If you’re really into adventure cycling, then you might want to check out Adventure Cycling, a company that specializes in, well, you guessed it by now: Cycling adventures.

That’s all well and good if you’ve got the money and time to embark on such journeys. The adventure we’re talking about here is the more practical and personal kind. Adventures you can craft on your own.

Depending on how much running you do, there is certainly a need to add some adventure to your training, because too much of the same kind of running not only puts you in a mental rut, it can harm you physically due to overuse injuries.

That’s why it is good to have a few places to run where you do absolutely anything other than what you can do from home.

In our area of the country, that means forest preserves. My son once told me that as a young kid he thought I was saying ‘forced preserves,’ which is a slightly different subject, but brings up an important point. Even many public parks have a carefully preserved feel about them, a ‘forced’ personal that says “You WILL have fun here.” And when you don’t, because many of our parks are delivered second had as former quarries and farm fields, there’s really very little adventure about them.

So it’s a little more difficult in some ways to create adventures when you are a runner. A cyclist can go all adventure just by doing more miles, or heading out where no one else rides. Unless you’re running a 20-miler, that’s harder to do as a runner.

My trick is finding the backwoods and trails at forest preserves and parks. A restored prairie near our home has 5 miles of grassy trails and you can truly be alone running through the bluestem and goldenrod. The changing of the seasons provides refreshing scenery, but snow cuts you off from those trails, because they are not plowed.

Running adventures can be spontaneous responses to weather, however. When a hurricane came north to Illinois a few years back, I went out running in what started to be a sprinkle, only to have the storm open up with droplets and buckets of rain like I’d never seen. It actually hurt your skin to be hit by those droplets but I kept running and started laughing at the absurdity of it. Small rivers covered the streets, and drivers honked as they passed, laughing and waving at the idiot in the rain. I gave up trying to skirt puddles because there was nowhere to go. That run was a real adventure.

Racing often provides the adventures you need in running. Signing up for distinctive events like a Midnight Madness run as I once did in central Iowa can shift your entire perspective on running. Not only was the race an interesting exercise in consciousness, it got me to realize how much form and pace awareness play a role in your success over 15 miles of running. We finished 5 laps of three miles in very strong heat, even for nightime, then stood under spray hoses to cool off. One cute gal forgot she was wearing a white outfit that quickly became transparent under the spray. And that was quite an adventure for all of us, but particularly for her. She shrugged and said, “What the hell?” It was too late to worry about it. That is an adventurous attitude.

Perhaps that gal provided inspiration for a number of racing opportunities that lend a sense of adventure. You can race in your underwear in Chicago and many other cities. You can even ride naked in events around the world at the World Naked Bike Ride. 

If stripping off your clothes is not your idea of an adventure (and that’s too bad) then combining other activities with you running and riding often provides a sense of adventure. Biking and birding is becoming popular, for example.

If you really want to open up your running blinders, find your local Hash House Harriers group. They’ll get you running and drinking, or is the other way around?

You get the picture. A little adventure is good for all of us in our running and riding. Forget the rules. Find your inner goof. Test your mettle. Get naked. Or dress up and join the zombies. Running and riding doesn’t have to be boring. Just don’t go swimming. We all know that’s a bore.