The Residual Sugar

Last weekend I was bound and determined to make up for getting pulled in the TOE 50. Saturday Carolyn and I did a 75 mile (actually 80 mile) charity ride for the Boys and Girls Club. Sunday I was going off to Bend to race Pickett's Charge and I was going to have fun. I was not going to push the outer edge of my fitness base. I was not going to push my bike through 50 miles of mud. I was not going to engage in one more exercise in humility. I was going to raise money for a good cause and have a good old time racing CAT III with people I might actually beat.

Saturday we loaded up the old bikes and headed for Willamette Mission Park for the start of the B&G ride. We used our iPhone maps to find the park. They told us it was in the middle of a field of hops in the middle of nowhere. Zillions of dollars of technology. GPS connections to satellites.  We're getting telemetry from military satellites and we still got lost! Give me a paper map any day.

We got there late, just in tim…

I've spent the last 24 hours thinking about racing, volunteers, failure, and the myth of coming in last.

For those who like to skip to the end - June 20th I did a 50 mile messy, dark, drizzly race and because of a breakdown in communication with the race director and the course marshals at the  lap point, I was pulled from the race by mistake. The marshal assuming I had missed the lap cutoff by three minutes didn't know the race started somewhere between five and ten minutes late so I was actually under the cutoff.

For those who want the backstory - Yesterday I entered the Test of Endurance 50 mile mountain bike race. This was one of those personal goal things. I knew I wouldn't do particularly well. I just wanted to finish, to prove I could do it. I'm 50. It was 50 miles. It was almost a year since my cancer surgery. Seemed a slam dunk for a symbolic personal victory. The race was two 25 mile laps with a four hour cutoff on the fist lap. The assumption is if you can&#…