The Amigos and I went to the movie "Race Across the Sky" Thursday night after happy hour. I have to be honest that I do have reservations about entering this event. There were portions of the movie that gave me nervous butterflies. It truly looks like one of those life changing journeys that so many of us want to attempt.
The question is Why? Why would someone like me want to put themselves through so much physical and mental suffering? The movie was fantastic and race is full of hundreds of individual stories.
There are no guarantees of getting in since it is a lottery. I have the OK from Patti and she is willing to come along as support so I think this is going to weigh heavily on my mind for the next several months. If by some miracle I should get in, then the question will be...How the hell do I train for something this big?
How do you train for 100 miles of racing above 10,000 ft. with 14,000 feet of elevation gain from start to finish? Especially when you live here in Minnesota. That scares the hell out of me.
I'm afraid that I could become obsessed with this. I guess if I do get in I will have to become obsessed with it.
4 comments:
You won't have monster hills to climb but you can prepare yourself to ride for 12 hours. If you know you can do that, it will take away a lot of the worries I think. Leadville is hard, the altitude is a butt kicker for out of towners but if you train and race smart you can do it. There are lots of recover sections between the hills. Let the huge field work for you. Get in pacelines and save your energy. Don't go balls out on St.Kevins (the first climb) because you won't recover. Ride steady, eat a lot like you will have trained for and it's totally doable.
We need to come up with a way to simulate lack of oxygen here in the midwest... hmmm and LUCKY you... the closest theater to us for the viewing was ummm about 2 hours south! bleh!
It was a great movie but I had the opposite reaction; if I ever had any desire to do it, it went away as the film rolled on. Kudos to those who do it but it looked like more suffering than I'm looking for particularly since I know I have issues with altitude and would need to move out there a month in advance to acclimate to it.
Great show...great event. Do I ever want to take it on? Sure, in my dreams. In my reality, I'm happy to let others do so!
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