While I was writing Chasing
AllieCat, life kept imitating art. I wrote Sadie's crash in the MTN bike
race, and later that week, I crashed. A body in the LeHillier/SouthBend
woods was found in the last year...the list goes on...
Anyway,
next week, I am undertaking an intentional imitation of art. I have
mountain biked plenty of times in my life, but have never ridden a mountain bike
race. I think I've felt like a fraud in some ways to write about mountain bike racing
without actually racing.
I have raced enough and watched enough that I
don't think there was any lack of authenticity in the story, but I'm finally, actually
undertaking a mountain bike race next week at this ripe old age. I have hardly told anybody
about it because it makes me nervous, and it's one of those fears that I have known I
"need to do this sometime." It's been hanging in my brain, taunting me, but now I am going to do it.
Next Saturday: Chequamegon 40, part of the Chequamegon Fat
Tire Festival from Hayward, Wisconsin to Cable, Wisconsin. Wish me luck.
My last big training ride is tomorrow at the Jesse James ride. Then
I'll ride David Hanel's mountain bike (he was so generous to loan it to
me; it weighs about twenty pounds less than my mountain bike) all week
to get used to it.
While we're on the subject, David is doing the Wisconsin Ironman Triathlon tomorrow, Sept. 7. So is my buddy Danielle Mitchell. So wish them luck and all the spirits of endurance.
Wish me: no broken bones and that I don't come in last.
