Skeptic on wheels

I'm rereading The Borderlands of Science by Michael Shermer (er, can you tell?) in a possibly futile attempt to keep my corporate-drone brain from turning to mush, and I restumbled across a passage that somehow didn't stick out the first time:

"In my own sport of cycling, in which I competed at elite ultra-marathon distances (200 miles to 3,000 miles) for ten years..."

HOW
COOL
IS
THAT?

In similar news, sometimes I wish I raced, because then I could be a Real Athlete participating in a Real Sport, but then I remember what I always disliked about Real Sports. When you hate to have to compete and don't have the self-discipline to train yourself (and don't have a whole lot of natural talent when it comes to speed, strength, or hand-eye coordination, either), well, what's left?