It's time to turn the page and move on to a new chapter. Trans Iowa was an epic, wet, muddy event and it came and went waaay too quickly! I mean, it was over before it really got started, and that's too bad. I don't think I'm the only one that thinks this way about it. It would seem that for more than a few, the Dirty Kanza 200 is looking like an event that will bring either redemption or closure for folks that were in Trans Iowa V2. Heck, maybe it's working in both ways for them, I don't know. For me, it is the first event of it's kind and the first race that I've entered since 1997. I wish that there would have been things like this to do back in those days. I would have really enjoyed it, but XC was king and endurance racing was in it's infancy back then. I'm sure that there were events to do in the 90's, but I never heard about them. Anyway..........
So, it looks as though this will be a pretty exciting event. Not just for you guys that are in this with me, but for me personally, it'll be a big, big challenge. I have done some long distance, fully loaded touring madness in my day, and that's kind of how I am looking at this event. I won't be riding a bike that is so heavy that I can't lift it off the ground, so that'll be a bonus! I will be riding a single speed in a very hilly event, which might be crazy, but then again, I never shifted much when I had the gears anyway. Raised a single speeder, always a single speeder, I guess. I will be turning to a new page in the story of my cycling life. That's going to be pretty cool. I know that it's going to be tough, but it wouldn't be worth anything to me if it wasn't.
I think this sort of thing is going to be right up my alley, or I wouldn't have signed on in the first place. I was tested at the local university back in the late 90's to see how I stacked up as a cyclist against other cyclists in my area. We were hooked up to all sorts of wonky machinery that measured all the gas intake and exhaust that the human body deals with while cycling under stress. We were tested to exhaustion. What the results showed were pretty eye opening, for me.
The rest of the cyclists showed a sharp uptake of oxygen when the load was applied to the trainer. Me? My oxygen uptake went down. That's right, down. My oxygen uptake stayed down and the amount then rose at a consistent level as more load was applied, but always at a level far below the other cyclists. I asked what that meant and was told that I was more adept at long, slower speed, endurance type efforts than the other guys. They were all in the go fast, short distance category. You know.....XC stuff. Exactly what I was trying to do. I didn't know of anything that suited my body make up at the time, so I sort of lost interest in the racing scene for this, and other reasons.
Now things are different. Thanks to Jeff Kerkove, and Trans Iowa, and all you other nutcases out there.......you know who you are! Well, I am about to write a new chapter in my cycling life. I'm not going to blame anyone but myself if it doesn't work out like I think it will. I just want to tell all of you guys thanks for your inspiration. I'll be looking forward to riding, and riding a long way, with you all.
More Dirty Kanza 200 stories and updates to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment