Sure, it's at least a little about me

 I've written in this space about my motivations for returning to racing, the desire to show that in addition to being fast and just plain fun, the bike can be an incredibly utilitarian tool, possibly even a superior form of transportation if one includes the metric of having-an-experience.  The old saying, "Half the fun of going is getting there," doesn't even come close to the fun ratio when the getting-there is riding a bicycle to the supermarket or work.  Life on two wheels under human power is great, and I want to promote that.

But mountain bike racing is a highly individual sport, and in that vein, my return to competition is also personal.  It has been 16 years since I rode a XC race schedule, and as of today, it is a week before my first return to that type of racing.  Yes, the challenge of riding to a race more than 15 miles from home is something new, but travelling distances by bike is now standard fare for me, so the destination of a race, in some ways, is just a new place to go.  But, it is also a 16 year old place for me to go.  My long history of racing and the degree of success experienced means I have some expectations of myself.  Certainly, I've aged, and nobody is immune to those effects, but also, I feel my older body is more well-roundly fit, more enduring, and racing will be an amazingly effective test of that feeling.

To win (or even just place), you must first finish, so the saying goes, and I'm confident of covering the 100+ miles to next week's start and then the 24 miles to the finish, but I also need to show a reasonable, or possibly even unreasonable, turn of speed to make this endeavor a success.  For the past two months, I've been pushing myself faster than in many years, and it has felt good to feel the speed returning, but has it been enough?  This past Tuesday, I joined the Northampton Cycling Club, for their weekly mass start hillclimb time trial, a four mile blitz to the top of Shutesbury.  I made it to the summit seventh out of twenty-four people, having never held pace with the front group of four, and only catching the lead chasers a mile from the finish.

On paper, that is not sufficient speed for racing the pro open class, but fortunately, I rode with a good excuse.  I was aboard the mountain bike with slicks, using the event as a chance to push hard in my race position.  That loaded me with a five to ten pound weight penalty versus the average bike in attendance, and while it is a hillclimb, the average speed for the winner was over 18mph, and I found myself spun out in my 30x11 top gear on the long flat stretches near the base and top.  Certainly, a stronger rider could've surmounted these challenges, but I'm not yet that rider, and so I'm left to evaluate what fitness I currently have.

The sun sets on my Tuesday night effort

That's exactly what I did on my hour ride home from the time trial, and I'm reasonably content.  In addition to the mountain bike handicap, I'm aware that next weekend's race will be closer to two hours rather than sixteen minutes.  Sure, I've been adding speed, but I'm banking on the endurance of riding everywhere for years coming to my advantage in the later stages of the race.  Also, what goes up, must come down, and if the finish on Tuesday had been back down at the base of the climb after a singletrack decent, there's a chance my mountain bike and I might have made it there first.  It is good solace that I was rarely the out-and-out strongest rider in my past racing days, but I had the ability to move through the terrain of New England with efficient speed, and it was that advantage that often brought me to the finish first.  I'm confident those abilities have survived the intervening years intact.

Ultimately, everyone's experience of the world is internal, and likewise, my experience of returning to competition will be the same.  It will be about me.  That alone was not enough reason to jump back into the fray; I needed more, so advocating for utilitarian bike use was a must, but I'm also excited to see where my body is, to once again push myself to some limits of speed, and if I'm lucky, done my preparations well, and still some years shy of infirm, maybe I can still resemble that racer I used to be.  I'll know soon.