Stay Classy

The Wasatch Classic cometh.

I have been keeping a close and curious eye on the snow melt this spring and early summer. It is breaking apart and trickling down the mountain at a healthy rate. The reservoirs and the rivers are full and roaring. The local chatter is reporting rapidly drying trails, and shrinking snow banks. From far below, the high country is green and brown, rather than white. It may just turn out that the enormous debt I feared would come due has been put off for some later day and after some future, spectacular winter.

In other words, the dirt should be in fine form for June 27th.

Which of course begs the question: What sort of form will my legs be in?

Only one way to find out.

But between now and then I will continue to push the envelope. To hurt, and huff and puff and bleed out my eyes and ears. The sweet pain is something I have enthusiastically embraced. After my Monday ride I marveled at that energetic exhaustion (oxymoronic?) that I felt. It was a satisfying, cleansing, invigorating feeling. I felt alive. And fit.

And as usual for this time of year, the opportunity to pit those feelings and perceptions against reality readily presents itself. Saturday I will race once again in the Intermountain Cup. The snaking, fantastic, and of course (because the trail guides say so) ‘world class’ trail system at the resort makes for a rewarding, scenic and iconic race experience. And as usual, Little Stick, that ugly, necessary evil that starts the race is going to hurt; over and over and over.

I can’t wait.

However, I find myself looking beyond Saturday, and even beyond the Wasatch Classic. I, like the blank minded shopper staring at shelves full of different sorts of groceries, am staring at a giant void known in the normal world as July. Where to go, what to ride? I am craving a traditional hundred miler. The kind with a massive start, aid stations, number plates, course markings and a running clock. But where? When?

Breckenridge?

The options, at least in the Rockies, are limited. Maybe the search is moot anyway. Perhaps the Wasatch Classic will so utterly flummox and destroy me that I will welcome the empty calendar and the subsequent slow, recovery days.

Only one way to find out.

Exit Question: Will you be at the Wasatch Classic?