Here we go

Riding is done, traveling starts tomorrow and then race time. I didn't get near the amount of miles in on the weekend that I wanted so instead of tapering and really treating this as a priority event I have continued to ride this week and am going to go at the LT 100 with a little different mindset. According to WEMS rules, to the best of my understanding, a 100 mile race is equivalent to a 12 hour race. The biggest difference is that in previous six hour races I have done, it has been the number of laps STARTED in the six hours, here it is number of laps COMPLETED within the 12 hours. I assume this is done to keep people from straggling out in the woods for even more prolonged amounts of time while suffering from fatigue and whatever else is plaguing a rider. Theoretically a person could end up riding an extra lap and it not counting, or piling in an extra 24 miles right before the "bell". So this forms my intent for the race: ride four laps each one under three hours. I am actually hoping to do the first two laps closer to two or two and a half hours which should give me a bit of padding for the latter two laps. The first fifty is going to be quite telling for me; even more in this race than in others. I haven't had a lot of long rides lately so I feel like if my legs are still under me at mile 50 that the base that I've built will carry me through the next 50.

This is the race plan, previous to it I get to meet up with Oakley Rob who is graciously hooking me up with a new pair of Jawbones, my favorite glasses ever, symbolizing the beginning of me riding for Oakley on a grass-roots level. It is humbling for me to have people addressing me and wanting to have me represent them. I understand that there are better riders than me, in basically every discipline. I understand there are cooler people than me, in basically every facet. I am happy that I have just enough skills, and am just cool enough (or people feel just bad enough for me) that they are happy to have me on board with their products and goals, and I am uber-happy to oblige. I am very lucky that I have had people to push me and support me, and I have touched on this before. This is year one of my cycling life with a focus predominantly on endurance racing. The sky is the limit and I hope the success that I've had this year is only a precursor to what can be attained.

Now, with Levis Trow's motivation and outlook slightly changed my focus and priority has once again returned to Gravel World Championships. Hopefully my new Salsa La Cruz Ti will be here and built and that will be the catalyst to really hammering the gravels in preparation. I wrote a while ago that one of my ultimate goals this year was to win the singlespeed class of GWC. Now the want to ride my La Cruz may outweigh my want to ride a singlespeed, so does that rule out riding the Salsa?... maybe not.