Prepping for a Big Race

 I have been getting ready for the Trans American bike race (TABR) for the past two years no make that four years. At first it was laziness and busyness and too many things going on in life and not wanting to ride my bicycle all that far, but then when I decided I really wanted to do the ride it was Covid and the pandemic that stopped me.

Once I had decided that I was really going to do TABR once and for all, I found that I was living in limbo and I didn’t want to train I just wanted to ride. I finally settled on training in the northwest at the site of the start of TABR. My friend Pat lives in Gearhart  and she invited me to stay at her house while I was getting ready.

So I find myself in Gearhart  getting in shape by riding  every day and fiddling with my bike to get it tuned so that it feels road ready and I can chase the pack (the lead pack) on the 2022 Transamerica bike race.

In two weeks we will be starting from the Maritime Museum in Astoria. I am looking forward to meeting many of the riders for the first time in fact all of the riders for the first time. I especially want to meet Katerina Ankovsky who was a friend and coworker with Tristan and Justin at Simon and Schuster, and Thomas Camaro the perennial oldest rider in the field. In fact this year I will be the oldest rookie in the race but Thomas will be the oldest rider having me beat by four years.

On June 5 at 6 o’clock in the morning we roll out from Astoria in a large neutral start. There  are currently 55 riders signed up for the race and we will all be together for that one moment. By the time we get across the Young River bridge we will be spread out and the lead riders will be going Helter skelter along Louis and Clark Road towards Seaside.  I know the route well but my legs don’t know the stress very well so by the time I get to Seaside I expect the lead riders will be 5 to 10 miles in front of me and hundred miles by the time I bend down the first night of the race the lead riders will already be a couple hundred miles down the road.  I may be curled up in a bivvy bag on the porch of Rose Lodge or I may be camping at the bottom of Slab Creek which is where we turn towards Salem and head in land. 

After a couple of days we will traverse McKenzie Pass I will anyway  and then be headed across eastern Oregon going through Sostrrs, Prineville Redmond and Baker among other small towns probably and I will be learning exactly what it means to not be in prime shape. I believe my muscles will be toned and ready for the right ride but my mind will not be toned yet and I will not have the miles endurance in my legs that I will need by the end of the race . Anyway it is fun to dream about what the race might become I will undoubtedly be well back and in the pack of finishers if I finish at all but I expect to exceed my own expectations if that’s the correct way to say it my original thought was to go 100 miles a day  but I am thinking probably if I ride 10 hours a day I can probably average closer to 12 miles an hour which would be 120 miles a day. That would put me at the finish line in six weeks or less many riders shoot for 30 days but I think that is out of my reach. 

My registration was rolled over two times but the calendar continued to roll over two times as well and I was getting older. I am currently 76 and hope to finish TABR TransAmerican bike race before my birthday in August that gives me 10 weeks to do 4200 miles . That gives me 10 weeks to do 160,000 feet of climbing. 

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