70-year-old cyclist's training regimen for bicycle tour

Seventy-year-old Sean Sweeney had a unique way of training for his latest bicycle tour from Montana to Alaska — he hauled sand.

The Adventure Cycling Association bike tour was his fourth long-distance tour since he bicycled cross country in 2002. To prepare for this 3,330-mile trek, he carried 50 pounds of sand in a BOB trailer up and down the Baltimore & Annapolis Trail in Maryland.

In “70-year-old undertakes cycling adventures,” Sweeney's wife, Sandy, told the Annapolis Capital that her husband has biked from Seattle to Bar Harbour, Maine; 3,000 miles on the Lewis & Clark trail; and 1,500 miles from Washington state to San Francisco.

Hearing from her husband along the present route, she says the Alaska bike tour is the most difficult because of the terrain, which can include steep grades, and road conditions that run the gamut from blacktop, to gravel, to dirt.

Three of the 14 cyclists who started the North Star trip from Missoula have dropped out, her wife said.

Sweeney not only undertook the ride for the adventure, but to raise money for the Bay Ridge Trust, a land preservation non-profit.

The Adventure Cycling Association says the North Star bike tour begins in Missoula, crosses the Yukon, and finishes at the tidal flats of the Knik Arm of Cook Inlet near Anchorage. The route also traverses six national parks in the US and Canada — Glacier, Waterton Lakes, Banff, Jasper, Kootenay, and Denali.