This race is in one month. Some say this race, and others like it, are a “test of endurance”. If Lumberjack is a test, then I’m cramming like a junior the night before the ACT.
At some point during my training my wife made a good point with one of her many questions:
Nic: How long is the race going to take?
Me: About 12 hours
Nic: How long have you been on the bike? The longest, I mean?
Me: … uhhhhh… 3 and a half hours…
Once I stopped heaving and wiped the vomit from my mouth, I made a drastic shift in training direction. I now train by time rather than distance. This means that instead of shooting for, say, XX miles, I shoot for X hours on the bike not including breaks.
This is difficult on many levels. First of all, I am used to riding for speed and distance. If I’m training hard, I want to go XX miles as fast as I can. This shift in training is forcing me to watch myself and not push too hard. I don’t need to get from A to B asap, I just need to go go go for the allotted time.
Second, pushing yourself to ride for X hours is tough on its own. So far I’ve completed my 5 hour goal. That day I simply set out early in the morning and rode as much as I could for 5 hours. I explored some new trail and learned a lot about how my body functions under stress.
Tomorrow I will shoot for 6 hours with as much singletrack as I can manage. This has some added difficulty rooted in one simple fact: singletrack is hard. The Lumberjack 100 is 100 miles of singletrack, not fire roads and rail trails. Not only do I have to manage myself for 12 hours, I have to be strong enough to complete the course.
As my mind and body fatigue during these long sessions I have schitzophrenic episodes regarding my participation in this race. One minute I’m wondering what the hell I’m thinking, I should just sell my entry. The next I’m thinking that I hate to quit, and that one lap after giving it all I’ve got is better than nothing.
After much back and forth internally (and very humbling and sweet encouragement from my lovely wife), I’ve decided that I’m going to race regardless of what my mind or body says. Part of my struggle has been holding off on any assumptions or feelings about how I’ll do. I need to be realistic: I may not finish this race, and the odds are against me. However, I also need to be optimistic: maybe, if I train hard enough and learn from my fatigue, I can finish.
Lumberjack has consumed my time on the bike over the last two weeks, and will consume me for the remaining four before the event. One thing I need to force myself to do is to sit up and take in what it is that I’m doing and where it is that I’m riding. I’m enjoying some of the finest wilderness Michigan has to offer, in an area with some of the best trails. Even if I don’t finish this race, I will have beat myself into the best shape I’ve been in years, and I will be further on my way to my fitness goal. That is more important than any race.