Sometimes I seriously don’t understand how people do it. I fully realize that people’s lives on social media are very, very curated, so you only see exactly what they want you to see, but sometimes I don’t get how people can have productive lives with work, family, taking care of their household, and finding time to ride, especially finding time to get prepared for something like the upcoming Dakota Five-O.
Now, I understand that we have an extra, time-consuming, layer on our lives with the Boi yet again having to go through cancer treatments, but even without that extra complexity, it still requires very early mornings to be able to balance it all out.
Add some extra complexity at work into the mix (we just had a major, national competitor open up 3 blocks away) and it becomes almost untenable. And with the Boi’s upcoming round of chemo coinciding perfectly with my Lovely’s first two weeks back at school, something had to give, so I pulled the plug on the Five-O.
It bums me out because the last time I raced/rode it was with the Boi in 2024, where he most certainly raced it with a cancerous tumor on his lung, making his feat even more impressive. Riding for the Boi is the reason I wanted to get back there and give myself a new memory of it. I realize that there are more Dakota Five-Os coming up, but the number I have left in my life is getting smaller and smaller and I’ve had WAY TOO MANY reasons that I couldn’t race it in the last 10’ish years.
BUT, making the decision to pull the plug on the race lifted a huge weight off my shoulders. I fully had and was working a decent plan of being ready for it, but it was going to take a lot of juggling and letting things sit to the side to do so. Being relived that I’m not doing it shouldn’t be the way I feel about not doing the race, but living up to the title of this blog, getting ready for the race should not be so damn serious (at least for me).
I’ll still be out there getting some miles I when I can, and we’ll still be at the Five-O, manning the course split, that we’ve been doing for a number of years now, so we’ll still get to see/hang with old friends before we have to jump in the car and head to Mayo the next day.
So on Sunday of Labor Day weekend, if you see me, let’s catch up, high five, raise a pint with each other, because even if I’m not riding, the most important part of Five-O weekend is seeing and talking to old friends.
