2009 was a big year for me – at least from the standpoint of my biking. Going from an intermittently-avid recreational rider, to full-on “racer” (a difference my coach made a clear distinction between), racing in 24 Worlds, then continuing to train hard through the end of the year, was a fundamental shift in my abilities & outlook on biking. Like was good, on the bike at least. Then an injury took me off the bike for a while, and the rest of life caught me up & chewed me out. The resultant adventure took me away from “the real world”, to a new life where the terrain went from dirt trails to the ocean, and the equipment from a mountain bike to a BCD & regulator.
Yup, I was livin’ the dream as a PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer Instructor, having gone through Utila Dive Centre’s excellent dive program. Then a dive injury took me out of the water for a while, life caught me up & chewed me out, and I landed back in “the real world” in Austin again.
A lot has happened since then, and unfortunately not much of it has involved biking. But that’s not what this post is really about. After all, this blog is about biking, right? So in true, What Was I Thinking! form, I decided I needed something big on the calendar to work towards. One (not surprising) distinction “coach” Shaun makes between racers & riders is what’s on the the calendar. Guess what, you need to have a race on the calendar to be a racer. HaHa. So hold that thought while I move back in time a few years. I’d just arrived back in the real-world after my Caribbean dive adventure, and was sitting down with a bike buddy to watch a new documentary he’d just received – Ride The Divide – “An award-winning feature film about the world's toughest mountain bike race, which traverses over 2700 miles along the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains.”
At the time, I thought “wow”, wouldn’t it be something to be able to do that. 2700 (mostly) off-road miles, 200,000 feet of climbing, totally self-supported. Crazy stuff. Someday, maybe someday, I’d like to compete in that little race.
Well, that someday will be (if the stars are aligned, and plans come together) June 14th 2014.
Yup
I’m officially putting it out there. Something big for the calendar. My goal is to race the Tour Divide in 2014.
Yeehaw! Let the adventure begin…
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