Out For More

I’m still “racing” the 6 Hours of Warrior Creek.  This is part two from yesterday.  I drag stuff out.  Always.

For the first time in months, my mind was focused.  I was “in the zone” or whatever the hell you call it.  My body, not so much.  Maximum effort for the last few hours was wearing me down, but I wanted to keep going.  I said I saw my heart rate get up to 206, but I missed the really big one (I can’t stare down at my handlebars the whole time you know.)  When I uploaded the data from my Garmin, it said my max HR was 226 with an average of 160 bpm.

Why didn’t I die?

I’m dead inside I guess.

Anyway, on the first downhill part I was feeling mighty fine.  Once I started climbing though, it was a different story.  I had to will myself to stay on the bike and mash, and it worked most of the time.  A short while into that lap I ran into and old friend, Patrick. 

Here he is at the start (with TomTom right behind him.)

Photo by Lunchbox

He was struggling too when I caught up to him, and I seem to remember both of us in this same position on our very first crack at this race a few years back.  We decided to hang together, and we kept each other going the rest of the lap.

Not long after teaming up with him, I saw my kid tucked into a crevice on the side of a hill.  He was taking photos again.

Photo cred:  Lunchbox

Patrick and I kept pushing, and our little duo of  “we don’t train for this shit but we do it anyway” made that lap seem a lot shorter.  We only hopped off to walk a couple of times (my first lap with the need to walk), and we did pretty well for being so worn out.  On the last big climb up to the road, I politely squeezed by to keep my momentum and gunned it for the finish line.  I heard Dicky yelling at me to hurry up so I could go out for another, so I grabbed my brakes real quick to slow down.  I was kidding of course, so I gave it all I had and crossed the line in five hours, thirty nine minutes (and a couple of seconds.)  I made the cutoff to go out for one more lap by less than a minute, but I knew I was done. 

I was happy with my effort, and definitely happy to be having fun in a race again.  It was time to relax and have a drink with friends, and I was so ready for it.

We hung out for a long time, shooting the shit with those that like to shoot the shit.  Once again, the folks up there in the hills put on one helluva race, and I’m glad I keep coming back.  I can’t say enough good things about the 6 Hours of Warrior Creek, that’s for sure.  But after getting up at 5:00 that morning to drive up there and racing all day, I was beat.  When we finally got back to the house, unpacked my truck, cleaned up and all that, I think I crashed about 10:30.  That was a long day for sure, but it was worth it. 

My apologies to Eastwood, I really tried to get to your party.  I’m old and can only do so much in one day.

And yeah, I can’t wait for next year so I can do this all over again.