A Hell of a Time

She says......"Do you need any more food....I mean, you only have a powerbar and a Cliff Bar...."

I say......"Nah....it's only 30 miles....I'm good...I do 60 miles with this food and I'm good"..........I got this, I say.

I'm pre-riding the 1st 10% of the AZT300.....it's 30 miles...it's ONLY 30 miles.....I just want to know how to pace myself when my folly starts on April 13th.......one of the few question marks left on the map......

My buoyant spirt on such a numerically minor ride shows in the happy snaps.  Moments in time are captured in focus....the past and the recently experienced remain fuzzy.  The past is fuzzy because we've over-analyzed things and the original reality is now overwritten by interpretation.  The near present is fuzzy because we've not processed it yet.  The only moment which is clear is the now....the moment the contact patch of tire is pressed into dirt....this is where the proverbial 'rubber meets the road'...the singular moment when the feeling happens....a flash of thought, smell and scene.  It's infinitely complex, and yet singularly complete.  This is the moment......

Blossoming Manzanita give flashes of pink as I fly by....slowing me down to crush their petals in my fingers and smell the metallic sweetness extracted from the volcanic soil...

....the exotically ferrous bark, curling against a new seasons growth, provide wonderful contrast against another bluebird sky in the Sonoran highlands.

Last summers growth still reaches high; standing fast against the daily movement of the bodies in motion beyond our control......

Looking back, the singletrack cuts through the savanna which hides my ride........this is to be the last of the 'happy snaps'...........

#57 was adamant that I go around..... adamant that I not use the gate.... adamant that I bushwack through the chaparall and cholla.  #57 was not to be trifled with,  He sent forth his message to the other beef in my way....do not let this man pass for he enjoys a Dionysian feast of bevo every October.....I struggled against herd of beef all day protecting the newly born of spring.  I guess I'd be obstinate too, if I knew I were malnourished, lacking in higher cognitive functions and destined for the slaughterhouse......

The Canelo Hills are a feature which exhibits none of the topographic bluster found in higher peaks of the region...but makes up for it in sheer beauty.  At their base is a planar grassland atypical of the Sonoran desert which rises gently into a spine of peaks which trend along a NW-SE aspect extending from the US-Mexican border.  The AZT  traverses the spine of this feature.....this means fall-line up....and fall-line down....look for flow elsewhere...this is a land of raw beauty and effort.

Cresting the highest point in the hills, I find evidence of another kind of endurance athlete...the athlete with everything to lose.  I marvel at the nutritional selection they left behind and I wonder if they won their race.  I hope they did....because I think I have to incorporate some of their nutrition into my next ride if they in fact made it......who the hell want's a Cliff Bar when you can have Barbacoa in a can?

As the day wore on, the realization painfully came into focus......the HAB was taking it's toll on my pace and body.  I was getting further and further behind in my planned pickup time.  My average pace was at the 5mph mark.....I'm normally a 9mph kind of guy.....this place is killing me.....and then I see the snows at 9300ft on Mt. Wrightson above the grasslands......I'm fine with dying here....

....but I ride on.....down this spine which went on forever......steep, flowly singletrack etched along a hogback of alluvial remains, covered in grass, buttressed by hidden cholla and not so hidden catclaw which tears at my flesh as I pass. It was bliss.....floating on air, gravity taking hold of my body; a body held somewhere between a sky of blue and terra firma in brown.....

I move on in a fog of nutritional deficit....I've been bonking for 30 minutes at this point, but still chuckling at the irony......It's apparent to me that Delilah has already been here......

As the day wears on....I'm exhausted for the little mileage I've gone, but happy that most of the climbing is behind me and the track has softened......

At the end of my ride....my friend makes sign that my woes are over....I chuckle at the sight, alone....laughing that I just got owned by a measly 30 miles....

....but that's ok...she appears holding an oilcan which I promptly own.  I also own the hell out of a pie at the Velvet Elvis pizza in Patagonia....the world is right once again.  I realize now that to finish the 300, all I have to do is make it through the first day and smile with the realization that the easiest day was yesterday.....not so different than life I guess.....it all sucks, until you review the pictures and realize you had a hell of a time......