Not long ago a friend admonished me for starting our Ten Centuries blog “in the middle.” “There is no beginning,” she said, “where you talk about what you are doing or explain the point.” Is Ten Centuries anything different from the millions of other blogs people use to chronicle their travels and stay in touch? Since we are currently in Maine in a lull before the annual family invasion, I thought I’d indulge in some back tracking. Where did this all start?

“Ten Centuries” originated in the spring of 2011 and was first conceived as a project called “Ten Centuries with My Husband/Ten Centuries with My Wife,” an obvious pun on marriage and bike riding.* I was trying to get John to agree to ride ten 100 mile bike rides with me (“centuries”) and for each of us to keep a diary of the journey, from training through completion. I had two goals; the physical one of completing the ten centuries (which for me was a big deal) and an intellectual one of taking the “male” and “female” diaries and writing something about long-term marriages and long distance bike riding.

At that time we were approaching our 37th wedding anniversary and John had just decided to retire from teaching. We were looking forward and thinking: “OK, now what? Our kids are grown, we’ve had good careers, we still like each other, we’re healthy and we’re financially stable. Life is good.” We could have sat back and been poster children for a “Life Is Good” t-shirt: a middle-aged couple with wine glasses in their hands flipping steaks on a grill with a 60 inch flat screen TV in the background or, in another version, Elsie and Elmer, the contented cows, chewing their cud in the dappled shade of a tree in a verdant, flower strewn field.

No thanks. We have long known that we are happiest as individuals and as a couple when we are chasing goals; the bigger, the hairier, and the more ambitious the better.** John, a voracious reader, explains it this way. “In literature, overcoming adversity makes a book interesting. Without it, nothing happens. It’s boring. The same idea applies to making a life or a relationship interesting. This doesn’t mean that you have to live in perpetual crises or to be miserable in order to have an interesting life. There are other ways to inject creative tension and juice things up. Chasing big, hairy, audacious goals — like Ten Centuries, riding the Etape du Tour and volunteering in Kenya — are ways to do that.”

In other words, Hard is Fun. That is what Ten Centuries is about: keeping things interesting and adding spice to your life by stretching your limits, setting big, difficult (for you) goals and doing the best you can to reach them; planning, training, trying, taking your lumps, conquering fear, celebrating your successes and learning all kinds of things along the way. There are infinite versions of “Ten Centuries.” The point is what is yours: A long distance bike ride? Running a marathon? Summiting a 4,000 meter peak? Playing a piano concerto? Building a house for a family in Central America? Earning a black belt? Singing a solo? Getting an advanced degree? Spending two weeks in silent meditation? Writing a book? Mastering a craft? Running for office? Caring for a loved one?

The past two years unspooled for us in ways neither John nor I could have imagined. I am seven centuries into my ten century goal and over a year behind schedule. Yet I remain committed to finishing and John is with me every pedal of the way. We have also signed up for more “Ten Century” “Hard is Fun” goals. This blog is where we will write about our journey.

Our Ten Centuries rides were as difficult for our support crew – Hank and Lynn Pownell – as they were for us. The payoff…

*My friend Mark Skidmore deserves credit for planting the idea of linking a relationship with a century bike ride.
**Anyone familiar with business literature will recognize the reference to Jim Collin’s and Jerry Porras’s concept of Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals (BHAGs). I liked them when I was in business, I like them now.