Liner Notes
Since I started writing for publications, my writing has gotten better. I can see it. And I give a ton of the credit to editors. Sometimes their feedback teaches me something about myself. Sometimes it reveals a subtext in my own story I didn’t even know was there.
I also believe in the value of seeing what pours out of a writer’s fingers before it’s filtered and polished.
So I’m trying something. I’m sharing my drafts as they were before anyone else got their hands on them. You get to see how a story transforms from demo to pressing.
Every essay in the DiMeo Unfiltered series will include:
(Unfiltered Edition) appended to the title
Liner Notes: What you’re reading now.
The Demo: The draft essay, straight out of my writing app, before it was exported to the platform where it lives.
Session Notes: The behind-the-scenes stuff. Alt text for the images, title options, the SEO description, topics for search engines, and what changed between the demo and the published piece.
This essay was edited by Jojo Teckina and published in The Narrative Arc on Medium. I love working with Jojo. She’s had an incredible impact on several of my stories.
To be fair, not every change between this demo and the pressing is hers. Some are my own polish from when I moved the draft into Medium. But the changes that matter most came from working with her. It’s all about collaboration.
On this one, Jojo especially helped with the lessons. In the demo, you’ll find only two, and they’re buried in the text. See if you can spot them. The Narrative Arc version has three, and they’re nicely called out.
The ending lands better, too. Session Notes will tell you why.
Read the pressing in The Narrative Arc.
The Demo
Six years ago, I couldn’t have imagined riding bikes the way I do today.
People will ask me now, “How long have you been cycling?”
I’ll answer honestly.
My older brother helped me take the training wheels off when I was three years old and I never looked back. I rode BMX as a kid. In college I got into mountain biking. Now I’m into gravel rides and still enjoy single-track.
It’s the story telling. The gaps I leave to your imagination. That’s really where the revisionist history enters the room.
When you hear BMX, maybe you think about the sweet tricks pro cyclists are doing at the X Games and Olympics. That wasn’t me. I could do a wheelie, a bunny hop, and jump over four tires down at The Pit.
The Pit. Yeah. It was a construction site on Union Ave in Rutherford, New Jersey back in the 70s. A hole in the ground with a dirt jump in the middle. We’d start at street level, roll down the hill, like the way a BMXer might get started at the top of a big half pipe. Then hit the jump at the bottom to see how many tires you could clear.
That was pretty much it. The wheelie, bunny hop, and clearing four tires.
I was a tall and gangly skinny kid. Nerdy. With glasses. You wouldn’t likely see a picture of me and think, “That kid was an athlete.” Hahaha.
Okay. I did ride that BMX bike from Rutherford to Secaucus once. The image in your head might be, “Woah. That must have been a long and dangerous adventure?”
It was dangerous, alright. I’m sure we were on Route 3 at some point.
Maybe “dumb” is a better description.
But it didn’t take a world class athlete to make the trek. In real distance, it was probably about five miles.
And that’s it. When I got my license, I didn’t ride a bike again until grad school. My new friends in UNC’s Biomedical Engineering Department introduced me to mountain biking.
What image does that provoke? For me, I see full face helmets. Dudes racing down the sides of mountains in Utah at the Red Bull Rampage.
If you’ve ever seen mountain biking on TV, that wasn’t us.
We were riding community trails in Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill. That area of North Carolina is called The Piedmont, which is another way of saying, “not hilly.”
They were fun rides and good workouts. We probably put in about eight miles in an afternoon. Maybe rack up a few hundred feet of elevation.
That’s it. Nothing crazy.
So I rode some BMX bikes in the 70s and 80s and then did a little casual mountain biking in grad school in the early 2000s.
I’ll be 54 in six weeks.
In the two weeks we stayed in Cedar Mountain, I cycled 154 miles and climbed 15,744 feet of elevation.
That’s nuts!
In my wildest dreams, I could never imagine riding a bike the way I’m riding today. These rides are epic. They are along ridgelines in the Pisgah Forest of Western North Carolina.
The climbs are insane.
Avery Creek Road to Bennet is a 4.4 mile segment with 1000 feet of climbing. I just did that ascent in under 36 minutes. It’s the fastest I’ve ever climbed that mountain road.
But here’s the thing. Six years ago, I couldn’t dream of climbing that hill on a bike. Five years ago, I was walking up that hill with my bike.
Between the ages of 49 and soon to be 54, I’ve completely transformed my body.
I look back today on a decision I made during COVID that I’m grateful for. It’s a decision that has had a lasting impact on how I’m aging, and what I believe is possible.
A year ago I’d never touched a guitar in my life and would describe myself as having no musical talent. Today, I’m strumming the guitar pretty alright.
Woah! I thought we were talking about bikes.
We are.
Here’s what happened six years ago.
A global pandemic highlighted the two most important things in life. Health and relationships. I made a decision to cherish both, and I haven’t stopped.
To be fair, I blew the dust off my bike in 2012. I was 40 years old, had a marriage that was collapsing, and I was 40 pounds overweight. I was fat and bald and about to be single. Not a good look.
By 2014 I was going on 10 mile social rides. This was very chill pedaling in Raleigh that started and finished at local breweries and bottle shops. Bikes and beer. Great combo.
I remember around that time being invited on a Sunday ride that was going to be a 20 mile loop around the Raleigh greenway system. It destroyed me. I couldn’t walk for a week.
With my newfound urgency for improving my health, I came up with a goal. I wanted to be able to ride my bike from my front door, through the city, and over to Umstead Park. There, I’d do a loop on the gravel roads, which had some fairly significant hills. And then I’d return home.
It was a dream.
This ride would be 27 miles and have 1600 feet of elevation gain. It would take me through NC State University, Meredith’s campus, and the Art Museum before making it to the horse farms leading to Umstead Park.
It was only seven miles over my known limit. A younger version of me might have approached this goal differently.
I’d have started at my edge. I’d have jumped on my bike and ripped out 20 miles with a passion. I’d have fought through the pain and gone back out before recovered, tried for 25 miles, or the whole bite. It’s a bike. It’s possible. I’ll walk if I have to.
But no. Not this time. I might not have had health with age. But I had the wisdom. I had the wisdom of so many goals where I went too hard, too soon, and ultimately ended up burnt out, or worse, injured.
First. I gave myself an incentive. A new bike. A really fancy new bike. I wanted a Moots. It’s a handmade, welded by humans, titanium frame built in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.
I had to find a builder. Frank of Frank’s Cyclery. I couldn’t just walk into a local bike shop and order a completely built Moots. It was a process. Frank would build the wheels, order all the parts, and assemble the bike by hand in his workshop.
But none of that would happen until after I completed my 27-mile roundtrip ride from home to Umstead Park.
Second. I was patient.
I made a plan that I expected would make me feel impatient. But, I knew it was the right thing to do. My idea was to turn cycling into a routine, and one that would start well below the edge of my capability.
The plan: Ride five miles toward my goal, then turn around and come home. It didn’t matter how good I felt at the 5-mile mark. I’d turn around and come home. That’s 10 miles round trip and well within my casual riding distance.
I would do that three times in one week, with a day or two of rest between each ride.
On the second week, I’d add one mile out. Same rule. No matter how I felt at mile six. Turn around.
Ten. Twelve. Fourteen. Sixteen miles. Weeks one, two, three, and four.
It never felt hard.
A month after starting, a sixteen mile ride was easy.
Week five, I rode nine miles out. The turnaround point was exactly at the mouth of Umstead Park. I felt great! I was so tempted to go into the park.
But I didn’t. I turned around, completing my eighteen mile ride. I stared into that park entrance two more times that week, knowing I could do it, if I just went in. I turned around each time.
On week six, I entered the park.
I remember talking about it at outdoor socials among friends.
“What are you up to, Andrew?”
“Oh, I’ve got this goal to ride to Umstead and back from home. When I do it, I’m buying myself a new bike!”
It took less than three months to complete the goal. But in the moment, it seemed like it was going to be forever into the future.
What’s so cool is how I could feel it as it was happening. Each ride was achievable. None of them were at my edge. None of them knocked me on my ass, or out of the game.
My Moots took months to build. Each frame is welded to order. By the time I got it, I was doing 60 mile rides in Raleigh, and 20 mile rides in the mountains. That elevation makes a big, big difference!
The last time I did a competitive anything, I was wrestling in freshman year of college. Even in my peak high school athletic days when I ran track and played football, the idea of riding a bike up a mountain couldn’t be formed. And it wouldn’t have been possible.
But here I was, 49 going on 50. That was five years ago. I entered my first ever bike race.
I got third place in my age group.
There was a 71 year old guy who beat my time by 21 minutes. I remember thinking, “I’ve got 21 years to get one minute better each year.”
So far, that’s holding up.
Session Notes
These include what changed, alt text for images, Title Options, the SEO Description, and topics.
What Changed
The lessons. In the demo, there are two, and they’re buried: I gave myself an incentive, and I was patient. In the pressing, “patient” became two lessons, starting small and staying consistent. All three got their own headers.
The ending. The demo stops at “So far, that’s holding up.” Remember the guitar? It shows up halfway through. Woah! I thought we were talking about bikes. Then it disappears. The pressing pays that off. The last lines connect the bike to the guitar and circle back to where the story started: it’s never too late to start learning something new.
New material. The pressing says more about where I was at 40. “I was in a bad place physically and mentally. Temper-tantrum guy was not who I wanted to be.” And yes, Jennifer Aniston made the cut.
The small stuff. “Transformed my body” became “body and mind.” “Soon to be 54” became “now.” “But here’s the thing” got cut. And a whole round of hyphens: 4.4-mile, world-class, full-face, first-ever, 71-year-old. So many hyphens.
Read the pressing in The Narrative Arc.
Alt Text Feature Photo
The author rides a gravel bike on a dirt road during the 2026 Dirt Diggler race. He wears an orange helmet, dark cycling kit, and sports a full gray beard. His race number 12 is mounted on the handlebars. Lush green forest lines the road, with other riders visible in the distance.
Alt Text Strava Chart
Strava activity log showing eight activities from September 5-20, 2026. Columns display sport type, date, title, time, distance, and elevation. Activities include: Man, I’m tired mountain bike ride (24.48 mi, 3,146 ft), Morning Hike (2.59 mi, 404 ft), DuPont Gravel with Abby (18.02 mi, 1,768 ft), Bent Creek to the Hub with Abby and Heath (36.01 mi, 3,937 ft), Bonked in DuPont mountain bike ride (17.45 mi, 2,234 ft), Avery Creek Climb with Abby (18.79 mi, 1,837 ft), Greenway Ride with Friends (12.21 mi, 361 ft), and 5th Annual Dirt Diggler (26.97 mi, 2,461 ft).
Title Options (ranked):
Best Shape at 54: My Cycling Story (34 chars) — Combines age-defying hook with clear topic; “best shape” is commonly searched.
I Started Cycling at 49. Here’s What Happened. (44 chars) — Curiosity gap plus specific age creates intrigue; “started cycling” is searchable.
From 20 Miles to 130: How I Got Fit at 50 (40 chars) — Concrete numbers show transformation; “get fit at 50” is a high-volume search term.
How Patience Made Me a Cyclist at 50 (36 chars) — Emphasizes the patience theme central to the piece; appeals to self-improvement searchers.
My 5-Year Cycling Transformation at 50 (37 chars) — Clear timeframe and topic; “transformation” performs well in fitness content.
SEO Description
At 49, a 20-mile ride destroyed me. Five years later, I’m racing gravel bikes in the mountains. Here’s the patient approach that transformed my fitness.
Topics (ranked):
Fitness Over 50 — High engagement on Medium; age-defying transformation stories resonate strongly with the platform’s 35+ demographic.
Cycling — Core topic with dedicated readership; pairs well with personal narrative format.
Self Improvement — Evergreen topic; the patience and goal-setting framework appeals broadly.
Health — COVID-era health awakening angle is timely and relatable; strong search volume.
Aging — Reframing what’s possible at 50+ taps into growing interest in longevity and active aging.
Thank you for reading.
Health, happiness, kindness, respect
for every being and all things.
— Andrew
© 2026 Andrew J. DiMeo, Sr., PhD.
All rights reserved. Permission granted to share with attribution.