Thursday, November 15, 2018

What have i done to myself

What have I done? How have I let myself get this bad?   I thought with age you get wiser, obviously not.   So it has been 5 years since I have full blown legitimately trained with drive and focus.  Sure I’ve been riding lots these last couple years, hell I’ve been at a handful of races every year since I swept the 8 hour race series 5.5 years ago.  You can race, give them money and you can race.

Now in that time I’ve had a few, ummm slips.  Ok not slips, crashes.   Now they were not awesome crashes, they were down right stupid.   I separated my shoulder while sort of riding my snowmobile.   5 km/h and an icy parking lot led to a grade two separation.   Later that summer I cracked a couple ribs defending my mountainview 9 lives enduro title.  Oh I didn’t do it on the bike.  Nope, I did it during the slip in slide competition part of the event.  Stop laughing.    Now the comment I got from my chiropractor was at least i hit the left side for a change.    So this isn’t the first time I’ve cracked ribs, but in the last few years I’ve seen a progressive decline of effort to fix what I’ve continue  to do myself.   I began to have a harder time taking deep breathes,  all the damage to my chest left things super tight.  My ability to throw the bike around in the technical declined, that strong core I had become more of a weak noodle.  I’m not saying that I became a ball of mush but I was going that way.   All my good recovery practices became ideas,  a self suggestions that got pushed towards the back of the to do list, well behind the sit on the deck with a beer.  So why did this happen, easy answer. It hurts.

Fixing things hurts, training properly  hurts, sometimes.   You have to be focused to make yourself do something that hurts.  For me I was not focused.  12 years of racing with 7 of them with a crazy amount  of ultra endurance events my head was not in it.  I was bored with a lot of the same races,  my body was tired, I found a new distraction with a girl who became my wife, other sports and adventurers pulled my attention away from racing.   So all the good things that focus training includes like Yoga, full body strength training, core workouts, proper stretching all became things that I thought about but didn’t do.  Add in a couple more injuries and what I have is a 45 year old that was waking up each day moaning about how much the body hurt.  My loving wife would just remind me “you know how to fix it, quit whining and fix it”.  Back to the beer on the deck answer, that fixes everything doesn’t it?  

Actually it does, but so does a renewed craving to race.   This past summer I had a combinations of events that  built my craving to train and race again.   It started out with Hayley telling me “I should do the Mohican 100 miler so she could go and ride this 25 mile trail system”.  Not “hey lets go ride this cool singletrack”.  That followed to her pushing, not very hard, to do the Quebec Singletrack Experience stage race.   Add in Andrew and myself taking AWI Racing to a national and international level race team supporting some amazing up and coming athletes.  Coaching some of my young athletes and watching them gain confidence to getting one of my endurance athletes absolutely destroying his goal at his first 8 hour solo races.  Each thing I did I was reminded  a little more about how much I missed racing and training myself.  Real training, interval training, off season core training, etc etc.  So welcome to the comeback, do I hear LL Cool J????

And welcome to reality.  My body hates me, I’m into my second week of  “can I turn this limp noodle into a stiff *****”.   No a blue pill doesn’t instantly give you good core strength.   When was the last time you stood on  one foot only  with your arms over head.  Oh yoga how you are kicking my ass right now.  Tree pose my ass, tree’s don’t fall over this often.  I’ve been pushing hard but being smart, I had no idea my upper body had become as weak as it has, some movements are strong  but others shocked me, 10 pounds is heavy in the right situation.  With ultra endurance mountain biking there are no set in stone movements.  It’s going to be a slow rebuild but the bonus with being this messed up you get great results quickly.  It’s that last 5% that is incrediby hard to get.                                            

So what does this renewed craving of self abuse lead to.  At 45 obviously its purely for me, I’m pretty sure I won’t be picked up by a World Cup level race team anytime soon.  I was bugged for years about the u.s. 100 mile races and what I’m missing, well this year I’m doing at least 3 of them.   Mohican 100, Wilderness 101 and Shenandoah 100.  The combo of new trails, new competition and the fact that it’s all you can drink beer at the finish line who wouldn’t be in for this.   Because of my fear of running out of beer my goal is to finish top 20 in open men at all three.   I’ve put realistic and attainable goals and it also means any spot closer to the front means a shorter line up for beer after the race. 2019 is a building year, for yet the next round of goals, challenges,adventures. I’m lucky to have a wife that will support/push/etc for any crazy idea i have come into my head, I’m just looking forward to approaching them again at the best I potentially can be. Where is the Advil? My body hurts from this typing 

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