Since Trevor already posted on this, I won't drop another 2,000 words, but rather pick up on some of his comments.
First, though, what a day. Being an amateur athlete, my life is full of wonder. What would've happened if I ran competitively in college? How good could I be if I quit my job? How crappy of a car does a professional runner drive? Would I be happy traveling around all the time, busting myself for measley prize money at races no one has ever heard of, doing what I love every day? Would it ruin that love of sport? Fortunately I've accumulated enough mortgages and student loans that I don't seriously consider any of those questions, but the 2nd one, the one about finding my potential is the one that haunts me. Very few times have I been able to dedicate myself to a single effort, and while this race wasn't quite one of them, it was pretty close. And on Stage 5, I got an insight to the answer to that question. And I liked what I saw.
5 separate teams that had crushed us all week were with us for the first 7 miles of climbing. We (ok, I) was slow out of checkpoint 1 and they were all ahead of us save for 1, but we gobbled 3 of them up on the singletrack. It was not without effort, but I didn't go cross-eyed and my insides didn't turn upside down on me either. It was a managed, controlled effort, but a damaging one as well. We finished 7th on the day, by far our best of the week, beating 3 teams in front of us. And that was with the mishaps Trevor mentioned (he left out me kicking the only rock for 100 yards and almost biffing it, and choking on my water bottle and half-gacking up whatever was in my throat). Like Trevor said in his post, what if we could do this for all 6 days? Again, the 'what ifs' will kill you in life, but when you can see part of the answer, and you like what you see, it's very encouraging.
And it was so much fun. To be fast, to be strong, to be smooth, to be consistent, to be on the same page as one another, and to crush people...Trevor said it best, some people have Paris, we'll always have Stage 5 : )
Some notes from Trevor
"I’m pretty sure that JP was feeling really good about a mile out from CP1. He was leading the pack." Yep. My legs were electric. I could feel them, so I wasn't unconscious as I've described before, they were very much active in their sensory feedback, but all they kept saying was, "Yeah, no problem, we've got this. Feel free to add on some more." Any athlete that has experienced those moments knows that feeling, and it usually ends very badly for the competition. ...as long as you don't go airborne into a tree apparently.
"We were feeling good and just continued to power even up climbs where in previous days we would have walked. " I fully knew the day was going to be epic when I was leading Trevor up a steep climb, and as the custom had become, stopped to walk. He came around me and kept running up the 12% slope at 11,500' and I asked, "Are you mad?!?!" He grinned and kept running. We didn't win the day, but I'm telling you, we were flying.
"It felt great. Where was this for the first 5 days? What would we have been capable of had we gelled like this since day 1?" I guess we'll just have to do it again, buddy : )
"I went sliding head first into down on the ground. " I was behind the big man when this happened. It was a full-on, head-first, belly-flop, limbs-flailing slide into home plate. Quite spectacular, if not really poorly-timed and disruptive.
"I look back to see JP on his back grabbing his knee... JP tripped and put his left knee into a tree. He was rolling around on his back with a wicked grimace on his face and clutching his leg/knee. At this point I though, “Game over, he really messed up his knee”. I was worried that he dislocated it, but I helped him up and he enforced “Rule 5”. Sweet Chickens, we were rolling again. Nothing was going to stop us today. " There are times when you get knocked down and you hardly feel the pain; you're just pissed you're off your game and you want to get going again. This was not one of those times. The adrenaline and endorphins surging through my veins couldn't mask the pain after 2 seconds. That's when you know you did a good job of bashing the shit out of yourself. Having spun around the wrong way, I ordered Trevor to come back up the hill, as my head was now down the trail and my feet back up it, and pull me up. I shuffled / limped for a second or two and said, "I'm driving, let's go." and off we went. To echo Trevor, "Nothing was going to stop us today."
Tomorrow...well, that's a different story altogether....
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