I will always respect your right to your opinions. If you had read all of my post in its totality before you began to respond to pieces of it, you would certainly have understood that I am opposed to the Real endurance/non endurance attitude that fosters a separation of lifetime miles and an us vs. them attitude between LD and REAL endurance riders. I believe my whole point was that there is room for everyone in this sport----juniors, seniors, rookies, newbies, 50 milers, 100's----I encourage the inclusion of all of them as endurance riders in the AERC. I encourage the inclusion of all of their miles in their lifetime mileage totals. I also encourage the record keeping of all of their participation in the different divisions----junior miles, LD/50/60/75/100/mulitdays----all are accomplishments deserving of respect. At the end of a member's endurance career, their lifetime miles should all be totaled as endurance miles with the miles for each category that they had the desire to pursue.
Now, I do take exception to your misreading of my great tribute to a great lady and my personal inspiration. Please go back and read my words concerning Julie Suhr---those words are a compliment Joe. Let me translate them for you: Obviously when one of the most legendary riders of our time, and more importantly, one of the most inspirational ladies of our sport, rides LD, that does not change the fact that she is an endurance rider. Don't you see the fallacy of saying that someone like Julie is not a REAL endurance rider and should not be able to count that ride in her lifetime miles, just because on a particular day, she might chose to do 35 instead of 50 or 100 miles. My next statement was an invitation to those who actually entertained such notions to please say them out loud---because their credibility would be so completely destroyed by such statements made against someone of Julie's stature that I would not have to respond at all. I really did not think ANYONE would take that invitation.
