Disclaimer: I’m not entirely comfortable sharing my training stories and outdoor endeavors. It’s funny, because besides my daughter, my wife, my family, my dog, my desire to live a life in line with my core values, to make a contribution to the cause, to uncovering meaning, purpose and connection in my life, training is what fuels me, riding a bike is my passion, swimming is my outlet, being in the gym is as important as a good night’s sleep. I love to read stories about others and their athletic feats and physical accomplishments, especially those who’ve overcome adversity, but for whatever reason, I’ve just not been comfortable sharing mine. I suppose it’s my fear of how it comes across. Who really cares what I do on a bike, in a pool, in a lake, ocean, or gym? But a recent ride has inspired me to write and to share.
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Like so many people, I’ve been riding a bike since I was a kid. It’s always been an outlet, a source of adventure, a vehicle to new and familiar places alike. After I was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis before my twentieth birthday, my folks got me my first full suspension mountain bike. My rheumatologist encouraged me to give up on my college basketball dreams and take up lower impact sports. The bike was a natural fit.
Since then, the bike has been a passion of mine. All through my time at North Idaho College, I’d ride Centennial Trail, and time-trial my way up Beauty Creek to the summit of the saddle. While at the University of Montana, my ride was a short bursty climb in Lolo, Montana, just above the banks of the Bitterroot River. While living in a National Park Service transit (an ancient tin trailer that resembles a sardine can), I’d come home from a long day of rangering, open the package I just grabbed from the post office at Mammoth Hot Springs, and watch the latest rendition of the Tour De France my mom had taped for me on VHS. She taped all of the mountain stages and mailed them to me the first four summers I rangered in Yellowstone. And then I’d get on my bike and climb. Some nights I’d climb the dirt road to Osprey Falls, and other nights I’d take the main road to Swan Lake Flats. But I always climbed.
Once I graduated from the University of Montana and moved to Gardiner, at the North Entrance to Yellowstone, I became obsessed (for seven years) with the climb from the North Entrance gate (where I’d start my timer) up to the flagpole at Park Headquarters at Mammoth Hot Springs. It was a 1,500-foot climb, in a little over five miles, and I had three check points, and I time-trialed it every night I rode it (three to six nights a week, six months a year).
I remember back to a time when I sat in my doctor’s office in Missoula, Montana, while attending the U of M. I was twenty-four years old. We were talking about my fatigue (spondy can be an ass kicker when it comes to pain-related fatigue, and migraines don’t help the cause), and I told her that I don’t remember what it feels like to feel good. It was then that she told me I had two choices in my approach to training: 1) long and slow; 2) short and hard. I chose the latter. I’ve never liked riding flats. I’ve always loved to climb. Since my brush with eternity (a story I tell in my second book Be Audacious, in a chapter titled Weathering the Storm), and my diagnosis with a crazy rare clotting disorder, I’ve been on blood thinners, and will be for life. While I was lying in the hospital bed, just days after the Christmas, the doctors told my mom I had a fifty/fifty chance of seeing, a doctor broke the news to me, giving me a quick tutorial on what it means to be Factor IV Leiden, homozygous. She listed all of the things I shouldn’t do on blood thinners. All activities I’d enjoyed throughout my twenties and early thirties: skiing, climbing, road and mountain biking, and I’m sure she referenced a few others, but she lost me at “mountain biking.”
I spent a lot of sleepless nights thinking about that doctor’s reference to giving up mountain biking while I recovered that winter, knowing that riding a bike wasn’t something I was willing to give up. So I devised a plan that I pitched to my blood specialist and super-doc at the University of Utah. I’d give up road biking (it’s too dangerous, there are no shoulders or paths where I live and there are more distracted drivers than ever before), but I needed to keep mountain biking. Technically, mountain biking represents a higher likelihood of hitting my head (what you don’t want to do on blood thinners), but at least I controlled that risk factor with my speed and technical skills, whereas a two ton pick-up truck running me over while some redneck is watching Trump’s latest rant on his cellphone is totally out of my control.
Being an athlete, training (riding, swimming and strength training) with spondy, presents its challenges. It’s a fine line between pushing and being cautious. I can’t just take some prescribed training program and put it to use. Everything has to be customized, adapted, tweaked and re-tweaked to work around my weak spots that are prone to flares. But I’ve found a good balance. For the most part, instead of grinding it out four, five, six days in a row in the saddle, like I used to, I stick to riding every other day. And when I’m in the saddle, I let it rip, as much as I’m comfortable ripping on blood thinners.
I’m an XC rider. I don’t consider my time on the bike training, it’s just riding. I go hard and fast for 60-90 minutes. I try not to ride more than a couple days in a row, but when the trail is dry and tacky, and it’s August, and I know my trail days are numbered, I say fuck it, and push the frequency, but I keep the time in the saddle in check, rarely going over two and a half hours in hopes of staying healthy and avoiding overuse injuries like the dreaded achilles flare–my nemesis.
Over the years I’ve often fantasized about doing some big marathon style endurance rides, but the progression and duration of time in the saddle required to build up to such an event has always felt out of reach. And though I’ve always loved to ride, I’ve ridden solo most of my life, and racing my mountain bike has always felt like a risky endeavor, bringing competition with others into an environment I hold sacred.
When I found out about a 38 mile mountain bike race/ride outside of Helena, Montana, one of our favorite places to ride, I was intrigued and put it on my calendar. But just like my open water swims, I never know how my body is going to respond to my weekly training sessions, so I keep it to myself, and wait and see. After a strong ride on my favorite local trail on a Thursday morning, I decided to opt in, and signed up for the race planned for Saturday. It seemed like a chill, low key, and not overly bro event, and I wasn’t in it to compete, but to participate, and hopefully finish.
It was my first time entering a mountain bike race. It was my first marathon style mountain bike ride/race. The York 38 Special. The events tagline “I Survived.” Thirty eight miles. 4,200 feet of elevation gain. I hadn’t spent more than 90 minutes in the saddle on a ride all summer and the average time for the Special was just under five hours. This felt like pure insanity. I didn’t tell anyone until the day before the event, knowing everyone close to me would discourage it, not because they didn’t believe in me, but because they didn’t want to see me over do it and not be able to ride for weeks, because everyone close to me knows what riding does for me, and in Bozeman, Montana, our mountain biking window is narrow. I told my wife and my massage therapist and they both supported this ambitious endeavor and believed, and that’s all I needed.
I didn’t sleep much the night before the race. I awoke at 2 AM, the brain train had left the station. My mind raced. Could I finish? Would I finish, but flare up my Achilles so badly that I miss the rest of the mountain bike season? Is this insane? Will I be on the trail for six+ hours?
I won’t get too deep into the race, but I’ll tell you that it was definitely special. I wasn’t “trained” up for it, so it was a total gut-check. I turned myself inside out. I climbed strong. I pushed the descents. I was in a spot of bother the last eleven miles, cramping in both quads, failing to execute my hydration plan, but I finished. I put in a big and gritty effort. It was a brutal ride, with long, sustained climbs, gnarly, rip roaring descents, stunning scenery and beautiful people. I said hello to every rider I passed, hung out with a few, climbed two of the biggest climbs with one, and expressed my gratitude to every volunteer I rode by, because the volunteers truly made this a special event.
The average time for the 82 male riders was just under 5 hours. I’ve been riding since the trails cleared this summer but haven’t done over a 90-minutes in the saddle in a single ride leading up to this event. Completing this ride at a race pace represented the hardest thing I’ve ever done on a bike. Though I rode alone for most of the race and had no idea where I stood, I finished ninth overall, and my daughter was stoked.
I crossed the finish line with a grimace and a smile on my face. My daughter and the amazing volunteers rang cow bells as I crossed the line. My legs were gone. I rode a good ride. I was proud of my effort and happy to have done it, but most of all, I was grateful. I was grateful my body allowed me to have this experience, to see all that I saw on the bike during that three hour and forty-two-minute endurance effort, and to show my daughter and wife that I’m more than my spondy and migraines and fatigue.
The best part was my daughter greeting me as I got off my bike. I signed her and my wife up for the Lucky 13, a shorter, thirteen-mile race that took place while 200+ riders tackled the 38 Special.
“Daddy, you did it!”
I smiled and kissed her forehead.
“Guess what?” she added.
“What, punk?”
“I won my race!”
In my 38 Special haze, I just laughed, pulled her in for a big hug, and looked at my wife and smiled. Bikes have a special way of doing that, you know, making us smile.
I don’t know yet how my body will respond to this big ride, but I’m already planning the next one, and if my I’m lucky, the one after that.
With nothin’ but love, MWL