10.31.2016 | 1:46 pm
A Note from Fatty: I know, I said I was going to start writing up my Crusher in the Tushar race report. But today I have my 100 Miles of Nowhere race report fresh in my mind, so I’m going to write it instead. Are you cool with that? Awesome.
There’s some irony to my 100 Miles of Nowhere routes. You would think that — as the inventor of this thing, as well as the guy who encourages people to be creative and even outlandish with their routes — I would have really out-there rides planned.
But I don’t.
I’ve done it going around a neighborhood block. I’ve done it going up and down a neighborhood climb. I’ve done it going around a fun mountain bike trail near a friend’s house. I’ve done it indoor, on a trainer or rollers, more often than any other way.
And for the past few years, I’ve been thinking to myself that I’d like to do the Cascade Springs climb as a 100 Miles of Nowhere route.
Not because it’s wacky. It’s not. It’s just a beautiful, challenging mountainous road that climbs from Cascade Springs Park — a dead-end road, not on the way to anywhere — to the summit of the Alpine loop.
Seven miles of little-used pavement. It starts with a hard-climbing three miles on rough chipseal:
During which you’ll pass a pullout with this incredible overlook:
And if you’re lucky, maybe you’ll find someone else there too, who can take pictures of both of you.
This is followed by a mile of descending…during which you’ll see a moose watering hole:
Once that’s over, you’ve got the hardest 1.5 mile climb of the trip ahead of you: between a ten and twelve percent grade for fifteen agonizing minutes.
The final mile to the summit, in comparison, is downright easy.
Then you turn around and come back down (with an intermission of down) the way you went up (and down).
One out-and-back iteration earns you 14.3 miles (and just a little more than 2500 feet of climbing). Which, coincidentally (truly, it is a coincidence), means that seven repetitions of this route gets you almost exactly 100 miles.
Without, naturally, having gone anywhere.
Nerves
The Hammer and The Monster joined me for this edition of the 100 Miles of Nowhere, and all three of us were pretty nervous about it, for a few reasons.
First, because we’re into the very end of October, and none of us are in the best riding shape of the season. The Hammer and I have been strictly riding for fun, and The Monster has been running more than riding.
Next, we all knew enough about the Cascade Springs climb to have a healthy respect for doing it even once in a ride. Doing it seven times? I think all of us were kind of scared whether we’d be able to do this.
And finally, this was a race against the sun. With a sunrise at 7:50 and sunset at 6:30 (ten and a half hours, basically), we were in serious danger of running out of light before we ran out of miles.
The Bad Beginning
One of the things I really love about The Hammer’s and my relationship is how well we work together. I mean that entirely honestly and without any kind of joke payoff coming down the pike. We really do make a great team in doing normal tasks, cooking dinner, getting ready for the day, stuff like that.
And on race / big ride days, that teamwork goes into overdrive.
We’ve done so many big rides and races with early morning starts that we don’t even have to talk about who’s going to do what. We just seamlessly get the bikes and breakfast and food and bottles ready together.
It’s something to behold, and — thanks to our efficient routine — it’s been an awful long time since we’ve forgotten something on one of our rides.
Until this ride.
As we unloaded our bikes at 7:30am and I put on my bike shoes and helmet, I thought to myself, “It’s cold enough that we’re going to want to wear windbreakers on the way down.”
But I didn’t go to my clothes bag — the one I had packed the night before with clothing for practically any contingency. I didn’t need to.
There was no point.
There was no point because I clearly remembered that after pulling out what I wanted and dressing that morning (Bibs, kneewarmers, long-sleeve jersey), I had left my clothing bag sitting on the bedroom floor.
I had no jacket for wind or rain. No tights in case it got colder. No short-sleeve jersey for when the day warmed up.
“I have no clothes but what I’m wearing,” I announced, embarrassed. “I guess I’ll be cold on the way down for a few laps, and be hot on the way up for the rest of the day.”
And then — like the wonderful overpacker and amazingly prepared human being she is — The Hammer handed me a windbreaker. In my size.
“I don’t have a jacket either,” The Monster said.
And of course, The Hammer had a jacket for her too. In her size.
“Maybe you can wear one of my short-sleeve jerseys when it gets warmer,” The Monster said.
“Uh huh,” I replied.
Full Disclosure
Now, before I get started with the riding part of this race report, I should confess: none of the pictures I’ve posted here so far are from last weekend’s 100 Miles of Nowhere. They’re from the right road, but taken during different times of the year, on different rides.
That should explain why everything looks so green in those pictures. And also why the IT Guy is in a couple of the pictures.
The scenery is decidedly much browner now. Like this:
OK, I’ll be honest and admit that I took this picture about a month ago (but it is on the correct road). On this particular day, I didn’t take a single picture.
I was just too worried about time. It was no sure thing we were going to complete this at all, so there was no time for jibber-jabber or whatnot.
The Monster Attacks
As we had driven to the parking lot where we’d be staging our 100 Miles of Nowhere attempt, The Monster had said, over and over, “You’re going to wait for me at the top, right? So I see you guys more than once during the day?”
I rolled my eyes. The Hammer rolled her eyes. We both knew that The Monster has been running and riding roughly ten times as much as we have been.
And — as both predicted and expected — The Monster began half-wheeling almost immediately, then attacked before we had finished climbing our first mile.
“Think she’ll still be charging ahead the fifth time up this mountain?” The Hammer asked.
“Baby, I won’t be able to hang with you the fifth time up up this mountain.
The Monster Breaks Her Collarbone
Amazingly, we all finished the first climb to the Alpine Loop Summit within a minute or two of each other, and we began our first descent.
And that’s when I found out how wonderful it is to descend with big wide (38mm!) tires and disc brakes.
The rough chipseal we’d be on all day turned to perfectly smooth pavement. I was confident and stable. And I was just really really enjoying myself.
Sure, I knew that I had only done the first of seven big climbs, but I felt good.
I got to the bottom first, stripped off my jacket, rolled it back up and put it back in my jersey pocket.
I wasn’t wishing for a short-sleeve jersey yet.
The Hammer and The Monster rolled up within moments and I looked at the timer on my GPS.
We had completed the first lap in about 1:20. We were ten minutes ahead of schedule. Awesome! We had reasoned that if we could bank ten or so minutes for each of the first three laps, hit our 1:30 target exactly on the fourth lap, and then use our banked time in the fifth through seventh lap, we could finish our hundred miles before it got dark.
Against a Crooked Sky
But there was a problem: The Monster’s rear tire was slowly going flat. “When did that happen?” The Hammer asked.
“A couple rides ago,” The Monster replied.
Kids. I tell you.
I swapped in a new tube. I’m slow at tire changes, so we had lost our banked time by the time we got going again. Even so, we still had a good chance of finishing before it got dark.
Again, The Monster half-wheeled, then attacked, beating The Hammer and me to the top.
Again, I bombed down, opening a gap quickly and finishing alone.
I looked at my computer: we had banked at least fifteen minutes this time.
While I waited for the ladies to arrive, rolled up my jacket (still didn’t wish for a short-sleeve jersey, to my relief). I filled my bottles. Then ate a donut.
Neither The Hammer nor The Monster had arrived, and that could mean only one thing: The Monster had crashed on the descent and now The Hammer was tending to her.
I was certain of it.
So I jumped on my bike and rode back up, hoping I was wrong.
And I was. The Monster had just flatted. Again.
Luckily, The Hammer was behind her when this happened because — as it turns out — while The Monster did have a tube and CO2 cannister, the CO2 cannister was…used.
Kids. I tell you.
Shut Up and Ride
There were more flats. All in all, I think The Monster had a dozen flats. Or maybe just (!) four.
And so we just could never seem to bank any time. Although we also managed to not get into time debt.
I found myself constantly doing math, trying to figure out how and whether we’d finish this ride before it got dark. We hadn’t brought lights, so if we didn’t finish before dark, well…we wouldn’t finish.
The numbers were close, and if we somehow managed to not slow down, we’d do it.
But of course we were going to slow down. We were climbing thousands of feet every single lap.
Hoping for reassurance, I voiced my concern to The Hammer during our fifth climb up: “I don’t think we’re going to make it.”
This was not the thing she needed to hear right at that moment, because she had a few choice words for me.
“Well excuse me for saying anything at all,” I said. I turned on a podcast and stopped talking. At all.
We all go into a dark place once in a while.
The Second-Halfer Asserts Herself
That argument — or what passes for an argument in these parts — didn’t last long, because The Hammer started going faster.
Or maybe I was going slower. The effect was the same, either way, because neither The Monster nor I could even pretend to hang with her. We’d yo-yo back and forth, surging to connect, and then falling off the back.
The Hammer just kept ticking over the pedals, steady as could be. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen thousand feet of climbing.
The Hammer rides a strong second half.
Principled Stand and a Strong Finish
Even so, The Hammer does get tired. And as we summited the sixth time, she wondered aloud, “What if we made this the 83 Miles of Nowhere?”
The idea was tempting. I wouldn’t have had a difficult time at all writing this story with an ending saying something like, “We climbed 15,000 feet of nowhere, and that’s plenty.”
But I wanted the hundred miles. I wanted to have a ride with more — lots more — climbing than I’ve ever done.
So I said so. “We’ve kept up a good pace, even with all the flats. Let’s check our miles when we get to the bottom, then climb enough one last time so we all cross 100 miles when we descend.”
And we did. Best of all, on this final lap, all three of us stayed together (even though I had to keep yelling at The Hammer to slow down).
Then one final seven-mile drop (OK, two three-mile drops, interrupted by a one-mile climb) and we were done.
We had started minutes before sunrise, and finished minutes after sunset. 10:34 of ride time, 9:00 of moving time.
Same place we started, but having climbed 16,938 feet (my distance was a little more than 100 miles because of my bonus distance checking on The Monster’s phantom collarbone break). Which, when I uploaded and corrected on Strava, upgraded to 18,150 feet of climbing.
Whichi is the elevation I’m going to tell people we did when racing the 2016 Hundred Miles of Nowhere: Cascade Springs Edition.
Obviously.
PS: I never wished I had a short-sleeve jersey on the entire day. So once in a while, you get away with something.
Maybe that’s the lesson of the day?
Comments (32)
10.27.2016 | 5:12 am
If you are a cyclist, you have a lot of fun. Like, way more fun than you can even hold in your head. This is cycling’s greatest truth.
This is also cycling’s curse.
The fact is, as a cyclist, all your memories of the fun you have is going to start piling up, getting jumbled in your head, and spilling over. Eventually, you wind up with a general recollection of having had a lot of fun, but a mild sense of confusion over specifically when or where you had fun, or why you remember some ride as being fun when you can recall suffering a lot, but can’t recall many moments that were…fun.
This is the main reason I write: to get the memories down while they’re fresh, so I can look back and read about the fun I had. Or remind my future self that sometimes I wasn’t having that much fun at all, and maybe find a lesson there.
But there’s a problem here: if you have too much fun, your fun outpaces your ability to keep up with it in writing. Sooner or later, you find yourself facing the reality that you’re going to have to write a race report about a race that you remember more as an amalgamation of several years’-worth of moments, rather than a distinct event.
That’s where I am now, with my report of the 2016 Crusher in the Tushar. Which happened back in July, for pity’s sake.
I want to write a race report about my race…but I just don’t know what I’d say about my individual effort. After all, I didn’t go my fastest, not even close. I didn’t get on the podium.
But I did have a lot of fun. (At least, my general impression is that I seem to remember having a lot of fun).
More than the fun I had, though, is my recollection that several women I know really impressed me, each in different ways.
Over the course of the next few posts, I’m going to write about my thoughts on their races.
But first, one not-about-women memory.
David and the Not-Disappearing Backpack
This David H, of Marin. He comments on my blog from time to time, is a really good guy, and is a big WBR supporter.
I remember talking with David before the race. I don’t remember what we were talking about (almost certainly unimportant pre-race course condition chatter), but I do remember that he was carrying one of those cheapo nylon bags they give you at race packet pickup.
You know how you can wear those as a backpack, if you don’t mind the cords cutting into your shoulders? That’s how he was carrying it.
“Is that your drop bag?” I asked.
“Yeah, I need to drop it off,” he said. And then we kept talking.
Before long, of course, it was time to line up — me in the 50+ age group, him in the 60+ age group, which started before my age group.
As I did my best to hang with the lead pack in my group and bridge from bunch to bunch, I saw Dave, riding ahead of me.
And as I got closer, I noticed: he still had that nylon bag on his back.
I couldn’t help but laugh: I knew exactly what had happened. He’d forgotten it was there. My best guess — correct, I’d find out later — was that he’d remembered it the moment the race had started and it was too late to do anything about it.
I raced seventy miles that day. Hard racing at my very limit, in a beautiful area. On pavement on dirt. I talked and raced with a lot of people.
But for whatever reason, the image that sticks with me for the 2016 Crusher in the Tushar is ten minutes into the race, seeing David, starting a big day of riding…with a cheapo nylon backpack full of stuff he didn’t want to have until the end of the race.
Comments (20)
10.24.2016 | 8:18 am
About a dozen days ago, I posted a little survey, asking you to tell me about your dream bike. (The survey is still open, by the way.) I wasn’t posting this survey idly; I’m really genuinely curious how other people think about dream bikes, because — much to The Hammer’s dismay — I have begun thinking a lot about my next dream bike.
So here’s the question: why don’t I have this bike that I want so bad? Well, when I asked this question in the survey, the most common replies to this question were that you can’t afford it (41%), or that you’re saving money for it (18%), or that someone is forbidding you from getting it (14%).
Well, the truth is, two out of the three of those most common responses apply to me and why I don’t have the bike I’m dreaming of: I can’t afford it right now, and I am squirreling money away for it. (The Hammer never forbids me from getting new bikes; she knows me too well to do that.)
But that little purple slice of the pie chart (7.5%) is the biggest and most important reason I don’t have this new dream bike: I have something really specific in mind, and it doesn’t quite exist yet.
See, I want the new Felt FR road bike. So far, so good…except I want to build it up with the wheels and components I choose; I don’t want a stock machine (26.2% of you also want to start with a frame and customize the wheels and components for your dream bike, by the way).
Oh, and I want to build my bike from the FR FRD Frame Kit:
Which is fine. That exists. But I also want to build this dream bike with disc brakes so I can put an ENVE SES 5.6 Road Disc wheelset on.
And that — The Felt FR FRD Frame Kit for disc brakes — doesn’t exist.
Yet.
But — and I’m just speculating here, but I’m a pretty good speculator — I have a difficult time imagining that this frameset will continue to not exist. By this time next year, in fact, I’ll bet there’s a Felt FR FRD Disc-Specific frame kit.
By then, maybe I’ll have the money on hand to buy this frame and build it the way I want it.
And if it doesn’t exist, well, there’s a fair chance that by then my attention will have turned more toward something like the Cervelo C5, built up with a SRAM eTap drivetrain and disc brakes, along with an ENVE SES 4.5 AR Disc wheelset.
The nice thing about a dream bike, after all, is it gets to be whatever you want it to be and can change with your whims.
And I am nothing if not whimsical.
Meanwhile, In Real Life
“But why,” I hear you musing aloud, “do you want a new road bike at all?”
It’s a fair question. My Tarmac SL4 is an incredible bike. I’ve loved it for the past three-plus years and have no plans to get rid of it.
But in the past few months, there are a couple things I’ve started really wanting my next road bike to have:
- Disc brakes: I’ve ridden with disc brakes on dirt for…I am not even sure how long now. Ten years? They’re just better, and that includes on the road. Every single knowledgeable person I’ve talked with who has ridden with disc brakes on their road bikes agrees they are way better.
- Clearance for wider tires: This CyclingTips podcast I did with James Huang convinced me: wider, lower-pressure tires will make a bigger difference in ride quality than pretty much anything else.
26mm tires is about as wide as I’m going to be able to go on my Tarmac (which I’ve done), and of course disc brakes aren’t going to happen.
However, I do happen to have a really nice, lightweight CX bike: my Felt F FRDX, built up with ENVE M50 Fifty wheels and a SRAM Force 1 drivetrain and disc brakes.
Who could say it isn’t beautiful?
The thing is, this bike is already road-bike light:
And it’s obviously got clearance for as wide of tires as I care to put on. So I went with Compass Cycles 38mm Barlow Pass tires:
Yep, 38mm road tires. Look how wide:
I’m inflating these to 60psi in the front, 65psi in the back. Between this width and this pressure, there is no chipseal in the county (and there’s a lot of chipseal in Utah County) that doesn’t get magically transmogrified into the smoothest tarmac in the world.
In short, my current road bike is a…CX bike.
With mountain bike wheels.
And big ol’ balloon road tires.
Weird, I know. But it ticks all the boxes that matter to me and I’m excited at how great this bike rides on the road.
Big Test This Weekend
So far, I haven’t taken this bike on any really long road rides. That changes this weekend, when The Hammer and I do our 100 Miles of Nowhere ride (we have to do ours early this year because I — like a lot of you — have other stuff going on on the official race day).
This year, we’ve picked a route I’ve wanted to do for a long time: 100 Miles of Cascade Springs (I’ve talked about this road before). Here’s what this scenic mountain out-and-back climb looks like, profile-wise:
That’ll be just under seven miles (and around 2000 feet of climbing).
And then there’s the return trip back to Cascade Springs Park:
That’s a much easier (just under) seven miles (although it still has around 300 feet of climbing).
So about seven of these fourteen-mile out-and-backs, with each iteration taking about an hour and a half, on average, I’m guessing. That’ll be a 16,000 foot day of climbing, and will take tennish hours.
Since sunrise will be at 7:50am and sunset will be at 6:33 pm, we should have enough time to do this ride in the daylight.
Barely. As long as we don’t need to eat or rest or otherwise take breaks.
Anyway, I’m going to be doing this ride on my disc-braked, fat-tired, low-pressured, 1×11-geared CX bike.
You know, my dream bike. For the interim.
PS: If you would like to join us for the 100 Miles of Nowhere, we’ll be starting at the Cascade Springs parking lot this Saturday at 7:50 am (unless the weather forecast shifts, in which case I’ll post the new day/time on my blog).
Comments (26)
10.20.2016 | 8:00 am
A “Last Chance to Register Note from Fatty: Friday, October 21 is your last day to register for the 100 Miles of Nowhere. What better way to cross the registration finish line this year…than to publish one last race report from last year?
I’m very pleased to have leroy — a Seriously Incredible Friend of Fatty (SIFaF) — have his story told today. By, naturally, his dog. It’s kind of serious, very funny, and extremely inspiring.
Read it, then sign up for the 100 Miles of Nowhere. It’s now or never, folks.
How leroy Won the 2015 Lantern Rouge 100 Miles of Nowhere Competition
By leroy’s Dog
Rules are funny things. They keep changing – especially in fashion and cycling.
No white pants after Labor Day was a rule, now it isn’t. No stripes with plaids is still a rule (and don’t think I don’t remind leroy). The ketchup you dropped on your T-Shirt can’t be removed by licking; no, don’t recruit the dog is an installment in an ongoing lecture series. But it should be a rule.
Cycling specific rules are more confusing: Sunglasses arms over the helmet straps, bib straps under the jersey, shaved legs include ankles (except for show poodles).
The great thing about the 100 Miles of Nowhere is that you make your own rules.
But last year, there was a rule at the intersection of fashion and cycling that bedeviled leroy: Don’t wear the jersey if you haven’t done the ride.
Plans Made, Plans Changed
By this time last Fall, leroy had signed up for 2015 100 Miles of Nowhere and was making plans for us. Loops around Prospect Park again? A tour of every rideable bridge in NYC? A ride encompassing his annual marshalling at the Tour de Bronx?
And then life intervened, confirming that it really is what happens when you’re making other plans.
The chest pains that had been taking longer and longer to go away when he warmed up came back unexpectedly and ran into his jaw. In hindsight, it was a classic presentation of a problem cyclists often think can’t happen to them. Here’s a good article about that. So leroy rode to see his doctor. His doctor turned pale, told him no more riding, and sent him to a cardiologist.
Two days later, leroy met the cardiologist for a stress test. Of course he dressed for the occasion:
But he didn’t pass.
The cardiologist told leroy the bad news was leroy had coronary artery disease and needed a cardiac catheterization. The good news was he “had time to put his affairs in order.”
Fortunately, all she meant was he needed a cardiac catheterization in the next few days, not the next few hours.
And again, no riding no matter how good he felt.
New Plans.
leroy scheduled a catheterization, certain it would show there had been a mistake. He was disappointed he’d miss marshalling the Tour de Bronx that weekend and worried he’d miss the 100 Miles of Nowhere the following week.
The catheterization was very cool. We got to watch. (Of course I went. I keep a companion animal vest for these occasions.)
leroy got two stents. Arteries that looked like winding country roads now look like super highways. He also got a bracelet perfect for Cyclocross.
Three weeks later, leroy went for another stress test. This time he wore the 2015 100 Miles of Nowhere T-Shirt which had arrived in the interim with a jersey.
He passed.
It’s All In Your Head (Because There’s So Much Room)
leroy was told he could start riding again in a few weeks, but he had to take it easy. He went through a 3 month cardio rehab program, mostly to confirm he was fine.
He graduated rehab in Spring 2016 with flying colors, but could he ride 100 miles? He felt fine physically, but riding distance is a mental challenge.
So the 2015 100 Miles of Nowhere jersey hung in his closet. Waiting.
He rode to Nyack a few times — a 65 mile route he’s done for years.
But it wasn’t 100 miles.
He rode BSNYC’s Gran Fondon’t – about a 75 mile ride when the round trip commute from Brooklyn to the Northern Manhattan start/finish is factored in.
Still no 100 miles.
And still the 100 Miles of Nowhere jersey hung in the closet. Waiting.
His inner monologue asked: What if you can’t ride 100 miles again?
His inner voice taunted: How can you wear the jersey if you haven’t done the ride?
His inner eight track tape looped: What if the jersey is destined to hang untouched for the rest of your riding career, a silent rebuke, testament to your mounting trash heap of inadequacies physical, mental, and moral; damning evidence of the ravages of age and ineptitude, threatening to crush you under the weight of recalcitrant recriminations, recherché regrets, recondite remonstrances, prancing, parading, perseverating like an endless stream of quick brown foxes jumping over the lazy dog ….
My Life Work As A Dog.
Aughhhhhhh!!!! Enough.
I beaned leroy with a chew toy. I’m not proud of that, but I wanted his attention.
I can put up with overheated inner monologue writing, but that quick brown fox thing is just typing.
Patiently I explained “Doofus, it’s just riding a bike. It’s just the 100 Miles of Nowhere. You decide what the rules are. You decide the distance. You decide the difficulty. It’s supposed to be fun.”
And honestly, who are you going to listen to – some random inner voice of doubt and despair or a talking dog? It’s silly that I even have to ask.
I sealed it by telling him if he wouldn’t wear the jersey, I would…. And no complaints about wet dog smell.
The Lantern Rouge
So in early July, leroy put on the 100 Miles of Nowhere Jersey and we rode a metric century over roads we’d ridden many times. We rode around the hills outside Piermont and then to Nyack, confirming that bears do go in the woods, but not how you think:
Later that month, in coastal Georgia, leroy wore the 100 Miles of Nowhere jersey for a Fahrenheit century.
Finally, this past August, leroy tried out a new pair of Asolo bibs with the 100 Miles of Nowhere Jersey for a ride with no destination and no plan other than to meander on a nice day.
Near Piermont, I found a couch while leroy climbed a short hill that briefly touches 16 or 17% and leads to an unwelcome sign.
We wandered over a favorite lake and then climbed to the Orchard northwest of Nyack.
We headed over to the foot of Bear Mountain to ride a quiet road that’s the northern end of the annual Escape New York Ride.
Then we moseyed along the Hudson River where they still discriminate against dogs.
We made a stop in Nyack so late that most cyclists had already gone home. Then we went home with a dirt road detour in Tallman Park.
Without thinking about it, we had wandered for more than 100 miles. (I’m not sure how far because I forgot to turn the Garmin back on for a few miles after the Hudson River bathroom insult.).
And this gives leroy bragging rights to the Lantern Rouge: completing the 2015 100 Miles of Nowhere 10 months after everyone else.
Of course, if someone wants to do a ride tomorrow of any distance and call it the 2015 100 Miles of Nowhere, they get the Lantern Rouge bragging rights because the rules are the way I like them: fluid.
Not a Shaggy Dog Story
So is there a point? Why yes, yes there is.
The 100 Miles of Nowhere is a wonderful, goofy, pointless event with a very important point. It helps Camp Kesem.
And Camp Kesem gives kids a break from the emotional toll cancer takes.
The irony: leroy registered for the 100 Miles of Nowhere to help Camp Kesem.
It turned out that the 100 Miles of Nowhere helped leroy more.
He’s riding. He’s fine. His head is as empty as it ever was.
And this year, when he heads out for the 2016 100 Miles of Nowhere, I’m planning a quiet little get together with friends. I’m thinking indoor beach party theme, tiki hut, luau, beach volley ball. That sort of thing.
Comments (25)
10.18.2016 | 9:40 am
A Note from Fatty: I love publishing readers’ stories from their 100 Miles of Nowhere efforts. Today, though, I want to do something a little different: give you a peek into Don B’s preparation for the 100 Miles of Nowhere. Partially, I’m doing this because Don has put something awesome together.
More than that, however, I wanted to point it out because of how Don is doing this. Specifically, he’s doing something amazing by not being afraid to ask people he knows — people who have access to resources — to do something good.
The whole secret to fundraising success, as far as I’m concerned, is exactly what Don is doing (and what I’ve done for about ten years now): gather your courage and ask people to join you in doing something good. I believe that most people want to do good things, and when given a compelling vision, will join you.
So: read this, and start thinking about what your own plan is. And whether you’re doing something on your own, with a few friends or family, or doing a big event, thank you.
And also, please register for the 100 Miles of Nowhere. This Friday (21 October) is the last day you can.
Don B’s 100 Miles of Nowhere at The Lebanon I-44 Speedway
Saturday, November 12th, 2016 I plan to ride a bicycle 100 miles. This distance, in and of itself, is not unusual for me. I’ve done it several times a year for the past ten years.
This 100 mile bike ride is different, though. I’m riding nowhere. I’m riding in circles. On a mountain bike. A rigid, single speed mountain bike. I’m riding on Missouri’s only NASCAR-sanctioned race track located in my hometown of Lebanon.
There. I’ve said it.
“Why would you want to do this?” you’re thinking to yourself. And — let’s be honest —it’s possible you’re thinking way worse things right now.
I’ll give you a little background to supplement my answer.
I like testing the limits of my endurance. I’m not fast, but rarely cave to the demons that come calling after 10, 20, or 30 consecutive hours of cycling. I enjoy the bond of shared cycling suffering. Paramount to this fairly selfish endeavor, I enjoy helping my fellow human beings, specifically those less fortunate among us. Individuals or families facing difficulties inherent to the diagnosis of cancer. I know these difficulties all too well and want to help ease the burden.
As a reader of this blog, you’re well versed on Fatty’s generosity. He and his family have inspired me on several occasions, but Fatty’s “100 Miles of Nowhere” fundraiser has been growing stronger on my radar for some time. His campaign to support Camp Kesem is exemplary of his selflessness. I’ve read 100 Miles of Nowhere race reports and watched videos of years past, enjoying the ludicrousness of it all. Hours on a trainer, 100 miles of circling the block, hill repeats, etc. They’re crazy awesome efforts, and I applaud them. This year I decide to join the fun.
I’m fortunate to call one of the owners of the Lebanon I-44 Speedway my friend, and approached him with the idea of riding 100 Miles of Nowhere on the track. I thought it would be a unique experience (and substantially less monotonous than a trainer). He immediately agreed to my request.
With a location secured, I entertained ideas to fan the flames of crazy. What could I do to make this effort more insane? It just so happens I’m a member of two local cycling teams, Springfield Brewing Company, and Team Kuat Racks, both of which are brimming with like-minded individuals up for a challenge.
This is a fundraiser for a great cause. If one rider is good, then 20-30 riders is exponentially more awesome! (we’re +20 riders to date). I set up a Facebook event with 10+ riders joining in the first few days.
The event page opened doors to even more generosity. There are a multitude of kind people supporting this cause. A national advertising company posting digital billboards in the city of Lebanon with specifics of the event.
A worldwide supplier of nutritional supplements is sending race day fuel
How’s your 22 mph hand-up?
With Fatty’s 100 Miles of Nowhere registration closing on Friday, Oct. 21st I would ask you to channel your inner cycling freak, and get registered.
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