Alls I Got

It all comes down to these next 2 weeks.

Well, maybe it all doesn’t, but much of it does. For the last six months I have planned and schemed and daydreamed about the Park City Point 2 Point. I’ve ridden the Park City trails week after week—I know, I know, but somebody has to do it—with the sole purpose of knowing exactly what lies around each bend, and over every horizon. And always with September 4th on the brain. Always monologuing and prognosticating on what might occur. What ought to occur. Hope and reality. Strange bedfellows, indeed.

And while I realize that with such ambition comes the distinct possibility for spectacular and fantastic failure, I embrace that risk, and will—on race day—roll with the punches.

But before then I get to test the waters of possibility and aggrandized strategic scheming at the Mount Ogden 50k. A race that last year proved to be a perfect primer for the P2P. I’m hoping for the same, if not a much better, result this year. That is, I have questions that need answering. And what better way to find those answers than to race 50 klicks of fast, twisty, fantastic singletrack? In fact, it might be that the grand and delusional ambitions I have long been harboring and fostering for the P2P will be tempered—somewhat—by the harsh tangibility of whatever may happen this week. But then… perhaps not.

And why not dream big?

To race at all requires us each to be wildly delusional. We each bring our own set of expectations, goals, ambitions and circumstances to the start line. All of which seem to be entirely discarded the moment we roll across the chalk and into—we hope—the lore of mountain bike history and canonical, sacred legend.

Tempered and moderate aspirations be damned.

So we dig. And dig. And what do we find? Deep dark places. Sometimes. But also an innate and unexpected ability to completely and wholly surprise and delight ourselves. In one shining moment all those intervals and early mornings and GPS files are forgotten. The 6 hour training rides and the distracted, unproductive days at work are irrelevant and meaningless. The world shrinks into the palm of your hand. It is you, the dirt, and the feathery lightness of mountain bike nirvana.

Just don’t hit a tree.

And now the months of riding and training and pouring over maps are over.

What I’ve got, is alls I’ve got.

And alls I’ve got, I fully intend to leave out on the trails of Park City, Utah.