Someone Bring Me to My Senses and Punch Me in the Sack.

I got my first mountain bike (an electric blue Trek 950 with Mountain LX 7-speed Hyperglide) with birthday and graduation money in 1989, so other than my relationship with my Lovely, I've been working at mountain biking longer than anything else in my life.

This is what it looked like at an early 90's race, but without
Tomac or Ned.

If you rode a mountain bike at all in the 90's, you raced.  There was a rule I think that you had to race your mountain bike if you had one, or even access to one, anytime from 1990 through 1998 or so, which is what I did.  There were plenty of times that I was WAY off the back, and then there were times when I was more at the front of the pack, even placing in the top 5 in the Expert classes at races.  BUT, those top finishes required a LOT of training and committment, which eventually made mountain biking a lot less fun.  So, when my work took me to the Front Range of Colorado in the late winter of 1998, it was a good time for me to change my focus of riding.  Sure, I still did a few races after that, but it wasn't the only focus of my riding, but more of a by-product.  As a matter of fact, I remember distinctly telling myself that I was no longer going to race except for a new'ish (at the time) format of 24 hour racing, which was a festival like atmosphere.  Eventually, even 24 hour racing fell by the wayside.  Now riding was all about just riding for fun, nothing more.

The 600 nut-jobs from last year's Five-O.

Fast forward 10 years to 2008.  We (the family and I) are preparing to move back to our current locale of the Black Hills of SD and I have friends racing in the Dakota Five-O and they have persuaded me to give it a whirl.  Without the gory details, I finished, but it wasn't a ton of fun, so why I signed up for the next year's race is beyond me.  I did and I got a little better, so I signed up yet again the next year (2010 for those keeping track).  I had mechanical issues (if you search this sad little blog, you'll come up with that gem of a race report) which were my fault, but I felt like I was getting better, so even though my time was worse, I felt good about it.  And of course last year I raced and peeled off my fastest time by far (almost an hour faster than my 2009 time).

So, when sign up day for this year's Five-O came around, 7:00 am on April 1st, I was at the ready on my computer and by 7:06 I was entered in my 5th Five-O.  And, by 11:30 am, all 600 spots were SOLD OUT!  What the hell?  Most of the time, I barely know what I'm gonna do next weekend, much less on a Sunday 5 months from now.

But wait, there's more.  In addition to the Five-O, there are some new races on the scene here in the Black Hills.  The first one is called the Black Hills Back 40, put on by super fast and nice guy, Phil Busching (yes, the same one that tortured me at my physical therapy) and others, which I'm planning on doing.  In addition to that one, there was one more mega race put on the calendar for this year, the Tatanka 100, a new 100 miler that I am contemplating (this sucker is early'ish in the season, so being ready for a 100 miles might be tough, at least for me).  In addition to all of this, I'm kicking around the thought of the 24 Hours of Moab, hopefully with Teamfubar intact or some other variant of it.  So what the hell does all this mean?  It means I'm back into being a mountain bike racer!  How the fuck did that happen?

I'm sure my face will look like this after most
rides this year.

I spent the previous 10 years just riding along.  Albeit fat and out of shape, and now I fat and in shape, or at least more so.  10 years of just riding my bike, not feeling like I had to, but when I wanted to.  Now, I'm putting 2, 3 and maybe even 4 of the biggest, longest races I've ever done on the table in front of me.  That Not-So-Serious moniker might be slipping away, maybe turning into a Somewhat-Serious Cyclist or even the Moderately-Focused Cyclist.  But never worry, it will NOT turn into the Very-Serious Cyclist, since if I have to choose between a "training" ride or a fun ride with friends, the fun ride will always win out.  Racing will still be a by-product of my riding, not the focus...but maybe I'll wear my heart rate monitor to the next "fun" ride, you know, just for fun.