What Was I Thinking!

I’ve found myself asking that question a lot recently. You see, I’m a Mountain Biker  (queue the mean grimacing face). Grrrr. You know the type - baggy shorts, garish jersey, lots of armor, full face helmet, slack head angle. Or I thought I was one. Now I’m not so sure…

So I’d been futzing around on various mountain bikes for years, mostly riding solo, occasionally riding more than once a week (hardcore!), the usual weekend warrior stuff. Then I moved to Austin and things started to slowly change. It started innocuously enough. I’d be riding more often, maybe two or three times a week, still solo as I hadn’t hooked up with other riders. Yet. Then I stumbled onto the the Austin MoJo community and found myself drinking the MoJo Koolaid (the fermented variety) and heading out on group rides to explore the numerous Austin trails that had otherwise been eluding me. I eventually found myself on one of Austin Bike’s famous Sunday BCGB (Barton Creek Greenbelt) tours. Typical tours last 4+ hours and cover 20+ miles trail at a social pace. And the first tour kicked my ass – it was probably twice as long as I’d ever ridden before. Ahh, the good old days when 4 hours was a nice long ride. But I digress.

I think that’s when it all started to go awry. I kept wanting to go faster (understandable) and much longer (questionable). I’d turn up early to get more ride time in, and keep going when the group quit. It wasn’t too long before I’d extend the rides to 6,7 sometimes 10 hours. And I’d effectively be riding solo again. There was a nasty trend here that I just didn't notice…

On a whim, I decided to enter a 40 mile MTB race at Camp Eagle, part of the TMBRA marathon series. I was still wearing the baggies & garish jersey, but decided to drop the armor & full-face helmet just for the race :) I didn’t do particularly well, but came sprinting over the finish line with more energy than the Tasmanian Devil, feeling like I was just getting warmed up. I guess my pacing left a little to be desired!

At this point, I was starting to at least notice the trend, but didn’t realize how insidious it had become. I started to look around for longer races and came across an upcoming 12 Hour race called the Dirty Dozen. A couple of MoJo buddies were racing as a relay team and asked me to join them. Naw. I think I’ll try it solo, says me. You’re nuts, they reply. Yup.

I had no idea about racing a 12 hour event. I turned up with enough Nutri-Grain bars to feed a small relay team, a jar of Peanut Butter and some honey. I’d read somewhere that PB&J sandwiches were good in long races, but I didn’t eat bread so figured I’d just spoon out the PB & squirt the honey directly into my mouth. Hey, it worked.

The race went surprisingly well, and I was getting into a groove after about 8 hours of riding. I didn’t pay much attention to lap times or other riders, just blithely rode around in circles. I didn’t even know how the final laps were handled, so when I found out I could keep riding longer than 12 hours, I though what the heck. Night riding is fun, I’m feeling good, so I’ll just keep on going.

After 12:34 time hours on the clock, I finally came in and called it a day. I still had no idea where I was in the standings, or even how many laps I’d done. I killed some time chatting with one of the photographers (he recognized me as the nutter who always stuck his tongue out when a camera was pointed at him!). Just before the awards were about to start, I decided it was time for a quick bio-break. I was just about to open the Porta Potty door, when I heard my name being announced on the PA. Huh? I sprinted back to the awards area, where I realized that the announcer was holding a plaque out for me. Turns out that I had completed the same number of laps as the 2nd place rider (albeit taking a lot longer to do it!).  I wasn’t expecting that.

It was around this point that a little light bulb went off in the old noggin. Hmm, so I just turned up to this 12 hour race knowing virtually nothing about the event, with zero training, and did OK. Huh. Maybe I could do more of these? You know, I’ve heard about these 24 hour races. Maybe I should look into one of those.

What Was I Thinking!

To Be Continued…