I did a BAAAAAD Thing.....

I've been off the bike a lot in the last 10 months. Cross season faded out with me racing on a broken hand for over a month. Then the next two months was a spattering of doctors visits, and slapdash rides with a cast on. Managed to get in some endurance snow sports when I went out west, then got the cast off. I got 1 really good training block in and started another before not seriously riding for about a month while swamped with finals and two larger events. I got really run down and never bounced back despite giving it time to recover. After a month of trying to race, I pulled the plug and haven't ridden in the month since.

I got out for a 2 hour ride last night. It's hard to not be paranoid on the bike considering the last few months, but I felt "normal-ish", just tired from not training.

Today I signed up for a 100 miler on impulse. I've been wanting to do one for a long time, but just haven't. I always said I'd do wilderness, but on a SS.


Pierre Hole 100, here I come. It's a 25 mile loop that you do 4 times. Not a good format for me. If it was one big loop, I'd have to finish to get home. But you have 3 chances to bail!!! Each lap has 4100 feet of vert, so you end up riding around 16,400 feet of climbing during the race. I hear it's mostly single-track with some double track and one paved section. Cool....but not necessarily fast. The catch is that I'm doing it to get the belt buckle....which you have to finish under 9 and a half hours to get. Looking at the results from last years race, there weren't many that would have gotten it. The race was also tiny last year. But there's one guy who raced it SS in the 50 and turned almost whats needed to get the 9.5 mark, and he's pretty damn fast. Having won TSEpic SS solo last year. The ticket for the buckle is to maintain faster than a 10.5mph average. That sounds easy enough right? Don't forget about the over 16 THOUSAND feet of climbing in this race. So, basically ask yourself if you can climb faster than 5mph off-road for probably over 50 miles.

I better start training.

Pierre Hole 100