Be a Winner, “Orbea” Loser

I’ve been cold-slacking on my training blog for quite a while now, but for good reason.  For one, working with computers 60 hours a week does not particularly fuel any raging inner desire to continue staring at a monitor in my precious free time.  Of course that doesn’t stop me from getting suckered on to Facebook by a daily barrage of emails informing me that someone I don’t know has replied to a comment I made about someone else’s comment about a photo of someone I knew briefly 17 years ago.  If you want in on some of that action, add me as a friend.

The biggest development in my Tour Divide world is the purchase of the bike I will be riding next June.  That’s right, you are looking at (words written by) the proud owner of a brand new Orbea carbon fiber 29er!  Or as my wife now calls it, “That Damn Bike.”  This thing is light, fast, precise, and an absolute joy to ride.  In the month I’ve had it, I’ve chewed up technical terrain at Memorial Park, I’ve run it up long climbs at Huntsville State Park, and I’ve gone balls out riding it on flat pavement, passing up surprised roadies in stride.  It has passed every test with beastly aptitude, and for the first time ever, I feel confident with what I’ve got between my legs.  Look out!  Comedy comin’ at ya, folks!  Someone should really pay me for this stuff, seriously.

So anytime my wife complains that I’m spending more time on That Damn Bike than with her, I remind her that I can either train to be a winner, “Orbea” loser.  Which one does she want to come home to?  Her is answer is “Someone who doesn’t make the same stupid joke every single day.”

My next post will be a self progress report on my training efforts up to this point.  For now, have a gander at my new mistress!

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Tour Divide 2009 Kicks Off This Week!

The 2009 Tour Divide starts this Friday!  I am stoked!  I found out about the Great Divide Race and the Tour Divide in 2008 after both races were already over, so I didn’t get to track the SPOT leaderboards.  This year you’d better believe that I’m going to be all up in it.

I checked the start list this morning and there are now 41 competitors scheduled to race.  Wow!  That’s the largest field in the history of the GDR and the TD.  The biggest name that has just been added is the one and only Matthew Lee, former champ and current record holder for the full GDMBR course.  If I’m not mistaken, he was going to sit this year out to help care for his new baby, but apparently the siren call of ultimate suffering was much too strong for him to resist!  Rock on!  (6/10/09 Update – as of this morning, Lee’s name has disappeared from the start list!  Methinks his wife had other thoughts??)

And what’s this?! Former GDR champ Jay Petervary is racing with his wife in tow!  The first tandem racers in GDMBR race history!  Double wow!  I am very interested to see how they do.  I imagine that such an endeavor holds the intrinsic capacity for bringing them closer than ever or causing them to despise each other!  (I TOLD you make that left at Albuquerque!)

Besides the more well known guys, so many unfamiliar names are competing as well.  Unfamiliar to me, anyway.  I wish I knew more about them, and what they have been doing as far as training.  That’s one of the reasons why I’m keeping this online training diary…there are many rider write-ups that we get to read post-race, but they include so very few details about their training.  If I happen to complete the TD in 2010, then perhaps my training log will be of use to future hopefuls.  

Anyway, good luck to all of the 2009 Tour Divide studs!  And good luck as well to the Great Divide Race competitors who kick off their shindig on June 19th.  You are pioneers, and a rare breed of adventurer, and I salute you! 

Now head on over to tourdivide.org to see the start list, leaderboards, etc.  And also bookmark mtbcast.com so you can listen to the racers’ call-ins.

Time To Get Selfish?

I am learning a hard lesson, and I can’t say that I like it that much.   For ‘tis an ugly lesson with ugly implications.  And if I take it as seriously as I should, it means I may have to risk the well-being of some precious real-life relationships.  Basically, that lesson is that if I am to have a real shot at completing the Tour Divide race of 2010, I am going to have to get a lot more selfish. 

You're a bum, Rock, ya know dat!?

There’s a scene in Rocky II where old man Mick tells Rocky that “For a 45 minute fight, you gotta train hard for 45,000 minutes!”  Only he left out the “H” in the word “thousand.”  Forty-five tousand minutes, I tell ya!!  Well I am somewhat embarrassed to say that I have taken that little nugget of movie wisdom and applied it to every event I’ve ever trained for.  Or at least I’ve tried…prior to last year’s backpacking trip to the Colorado Rockies, for example, I trained with a fully loaded pack as much as I could, but I never came near Mick’s ungodly 1000 to 1 ratio.  The point is, though, I like to train as if I’m actually trying to attain that goal, no matter how out of reach it may seem.

Well, the Tour Divide is 2745 miles long, so using Mick-logic once again, I need to get in 2,745,000 training miles.  Lol, not bloody likely.  But the sentiment is still true.  The TD is a race of epic scale, the most brutal and carnivorous of maneaters, and to even have an iota of a chance, I will have to spend every precious free moment in training.

That being said, here is a sentence that I think I will be saying quite a bit for the next year:  “Sorry, I can’t.  I have to train.”

Mom’s birthday party on Saturday?  “Sorry, I can’t.    I have to train.”

The words I will write on a friend’s wedding invitation?  “Sorry, I can’t.    I have to train.”

Wife’s company picnic?  Niece’s softball game?  Annual family vacation to New Braunfels?  “Guys, I really am sorry, but I just can’t make it.  I have to train…the race is only a year away.”

Unfortunately, I am not joking about any of this.  Next weekend is Memorial Day weekend, and Paul and I are spending it training at Hunstville State Park with a goal of 200 miles in two days, which would be a first for both of us.  My poor, lovely wife and daughter are getting shafted out of a fun family holiday because of it. 

Using another movie example (which I suspect I’ll be doing a lot of on this web site), I urge the reader to watch Arnold Schwarzenegger in this priceless clip from the 1977 documentary “Pumping Iron,” in which Arnie is competing for the Mr. Olympia title:

While I couldn’t bring myself to miss my dad’s funeral, and while I stop short of calling social commitments “negative forces,” Arnie’s basic premise is true in terms of my training for the TD.  If I was a seasoned endurance rider, maybe I wouldn’t have to castrate myself from my own life.  But I’m coming at this thing as a total noob,  and I’m afraid that if I don’t give it everything I’ve got, I’m just setting myself up for failure. 

And so, for the next 13 months, I must make a social outcast of myself.  Adios, dear nephew, have a blast at your birthday party.  Adieu, my beautiful wife, I won’t be there when you wake up Saturday morning.    No, dude, I can’t help you move, I’m sorry, I have to ride my bike.  Yeah, I guess I’m kind of an a-hole like that these days.

I don’t expect a great deal of understanding…most people I mention this quest to think I’m insane, or  don’t comprehend the brutal magnitude of the race, and thus won’t see why I have to blow them off.  Many will have their feelings hurt, I am sure.  But the simple fact is that to accomplish something so magnificent and so monumentally epic, you have to work like a dog, you have to suffer mightily, and you have to make sacrifices.   That, or fail. 

So here is a formal, pre-emptive apology to everyone I shrug off for the next year.  To my family and friends, I am truly sorry, and I will do my best to make it up to you when the race is over.  I hope until then, you will support me in this grand endeavor and forgive me when I blow you off.  I promise I will make it up to you!

It’s Official

So my boss approved my vacation request today for the entire month of June 2010.  That’s pretty huge…I was somewhat worried that she would express concerns about me being gone that long, since it will put a great strain on the guys who will take on my workload while I’m out.  I feel really, really sorry for those guys, lol.

But my quest has gained a degree of officiality now.  This business of romping through the mountains on my bike is over a year away, and has maintained quite a surreal, dreamy feel up to now.   Seeing my boss’s approval made me sort of stop and think, “Whoa…it’s for real.  I’m really going to do it.” 

Said my boss’s second hand man:  “How many miles is that?”

“2781 miles with 200,000 total feet of climbing!” I answered, suddenly feeling humbled all over again.

“You realize,” he said, “that that’s like 100 miles a day.  I wouldn’t even do that on my motorcycle.”

I didn’t want to tell him that my goal was to get a lot more than that per day…he was already thinking that I was a wee bit touched in the head.  The truth is, however, that you probably do need to unscrew your brain a little bit to want to attempt this race…you may even need to lose a few of those screws.  But hell, chances are you don’t need ALL of them anyway.