TD Training Entry #12: This Decade Demands a Century

A new decade is upon on us, friend!  (don’t spoil my fun by telling me that technically the new decade starts in 2011)  Today marks the beginning of a new era!  Flush your failures down the Toilet of Yesteryear, for you have just been handed an empty slate and a new lease on Life!  What, pray tell, will you do with them?  (pssst…flush one more time…it didn’t all go down)

Hopefully you will be embarking upon the greatest adventure of your life, whatever that might be.  For me, it’s the 2010 Tour Divide, and I can scarcely believe that the start is now less than six months away.  I’ve spent a full year transforming myself into some parodic semblance of an endurance rider, sacrificing time, money, comfort, and the perception of sound mental capacities in order to pursue the opportunity to torture myself for weeks on end. 

Towards that goal, and to herald the start of a new decade, it’s time for me to kick it up a notch and test my hard-earned mountain biking superpowers in my first ever endurance event.  On Januray 23^rd, my buddy Pat and I will ride in the first annual Red River Riot, a self-supported, 100 mile endurance challenge in Saint Jo, Tx.  They call it a “challenge” rather than a race, because there will be no prizes given.  Therefore, if I win, I will create my own reward, which will be to stand at the finish line and yell, “Yeah!  I BEAT you!” to other riders as they finish.

Kidding of course.  I am no such a-hole and I don’t expect to finish anywhere near first.  I expect only to have a great time, meet some cool people, and gain some self supported “racing” experience.  Here’s an excerpt about the Riot from the registration web site:

The course will be a unique combination of singletrack, dirt roads, gravel roads, Jeep roads and as little actual pavement as we need to tie it all together for well over 100 miles of off road greatness for the strongest of the strong.

Hey, sounds pretty TD-like to me!  In fact, I have noticed that TD ‘09 alum and fellow Texan Ray Porter is signed up for the men’s singlespeed category.  I hope we can track him down and coax some words of wisdom out of him. 

Also, I invited another Texan and TD ‘09 alum to join us: the superhuman Cadet Bryant, who recently raced on foot against HORSES…and beat some of them!  This guy eats 100 mile runs for breakfast! 

Speaking of Cadet, I want to give long overdue props to him and another TD ’09 alum, Eric Bruntjen.  Both of these guys have been ultracool mentors to me and Pat in our preparations for the 2010 Tour Divide.  They have given their excellent advice freely and generously, and it has proven invaluable in our training, gear choices, and even our travel plans.  Eric finished in ’09 with a very impressive time of 21:12:00, and was able to ease my considerable fears about the Great Basin.  Cadet had to pull out in Eureka due to a blown knee, but this year he is coming back to take his vengeance!  Keep on rockin’, Eric and Cadet!

After Pat and I cut our teeth the Red River Riot, I believe we will focus on conjuring up our own personal multi-day bikepacking events.  Our (highly irritating) problem is that we can’t take a lick of vacation time from work, as we are having to reserve every hour of vacation pay for the TD.  So we can’t really travel to cool events like the Arizona Trail 300, which I would absolutely love to do.  Instead, we’ll need to identify a 200+ mile route somewhere in the Texas Hill Country, drive up there on a Friday night after work, ride 16 hours Saturday, throw down the bivies, ride 16 hours Sunday, then drive home late Sunday night and go to work the next day.  Ouch.  Not ideal, but it will help us to get a feel for what a couple days on the TD will be like, and it will let us test out our obsessively researched gear choices.

Did you say gear?  Because I got a smackload of it last month, thanks to my supportive family and a healthy Christmas bonus.  For my birthday, I got my REI bivy sack and my Pearl Izumi X-Alps.  Haven’t had a good chance to test the bivy out yet, but I’ve been breaking in the Alps and I love ‘em.  Then, for Christmas, I got my Showers Pass rain gear, my Wingnut backpack, a new Black Diamond headlamp, and Dakota Fanning.  Oh, sorry, I mean my Garmin Dakota 20 GPS.  I nicknamed it Dakota Fanning because its small, lightweight, intelligent, responsive, irritating in a couple small ways, and it tells people precisely where to go. 

Out of all my new gear, I have been most enamored by Dakota Fanning.  I’ve never owned a handheld GPS before, and after exhaustive research and reading Scott Morris’ recommendation, I decided on the Dakota, and I have been most pleased.  It’s a cinch to operate, perfect for noobsters like me. I’ve been playing around with all the settings and fiddling with custom maps (gpsfiledepot.com is rockin), and I’ve even done some geocaching in my area.  I’m totally lovin’ this thing, and I’m dying to put it to the test in the wilds. 

I’ll leave you with a few crappy cell phone pics rom my ride at Huntsville State Park yesterday.  Hope you’ve had a great holiday season with family and friends, and I wish you well in the new decade!  Now get back to work. 

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