In a mashup of thoughts this morning, I’ve discovered the love of Xterra races roughly equivalent to my love of my electric EGO lawn mower.
Over the past 15 or so years, I’ve been pretty competitive in all distances of triathlon, usually in the top 10-20% of finishers and lucky enough to have done some of the outstanding venues like TTT or Norseman or Canadaman. Awesome races.
But late last year I was out fat-biking on some trails and came out of the woods where a local bike dealer had demo days. My mind expanded immediately when I hopped on a Cannondale Scalpel with the new Ocho Lefty fork and just had a wild hare of a time in the woods. Decided that day to buy a real XC mountain bike and do some events this year like Xterra and longer races like the Borah Epic 40 or Lutsen 99.
Long story short, I had a fabulous build and travel to Xterra Oak Mountain in Birmingham, AL in May. Met a whole group of wonderful new people who accepted me into the tribe. On entering the water on the 2nd lap of the swim, I jumped on a pointy rock and proceeded to purple the bottom of my foot. Rode OK, but when it came time to run I felt like I had a boulder under my arch. Ran on my toes until a massive wipeout over a root at the 2.5K portion of the run. My left hip was so stunned that I couldn’t even get the leg moving or stand up for 5 minutes. And to this day have only run once more, at another Xterra race. Effectively, and not knowing it at the time, my summer race season was done. Ran/walked to the finished and considered the race a blast even though I was covered in dirt and blood and the bottom of my foot would be purple for two weeks and my left hip has been toast for months.
Next race was Xterra D.IN.O at Potato Creek State Park in Northern Indiana. Since there were back-to-back races in Indiana and Southern Michigan, I decided to do both and spend the week working out of the mobile office and visit friends and see some of the sights in Michigan, which I’ve neglected for my whole adult life.
Drove to DINO, pre-biked the course with the same friends from Alabama, cooked, swapped stories, raced the next day. My race beauty moments (2) were in the first lap of the bike when I tried to pass someone else and biked off the course into a raspberry patch. But my perfect “golf shot” moment was when I had settled down for lap 2 of the bike, and rounded a banked 180-degree turn in my flow-state-of-bliss, completely focused on the ride and path and not thinking and not having a tune running through my head. I could have stopped racing at that moment and been content with my race.
As Michigan was in a heat wave for the week, I skipped the subsequent race, traveled to state forests and National Parks along Lake Michigan to avoid the heat and got to travel through northern and Upper Michigan before heading back home.
I had no idea where I finished until a few days ago when I was asked how I did, and honestly hadn’t even considered it until that moment. I got smack in the middle, 50 of 100 finishers.
So, what does this have to do with EGO Lawns? I mowed today with my electric EGO lawnmower. I hate mowing; it is why I had teenagers around for awhile until they moved out and I got stuck back with the problem.
But I love mowing with this mower. I was even considering doing crop circles or those meditation circles where you walk around in mowed grass around some concentric point. Those two thoughts came together with this:
I’ve reached an age where I can enjoy the mindlessness of a good electric mower and accomplishment of a good mow, and I can enjoy a race for the race itself; no results, no competition, no HR strap, no power meter. I can go have fun joining the participation group in a race and not even have to consider the race portion of the race. Or I can skip one all together and not concern myself with a drop in my USAT rankings.
And the mobile office in the photo background is also a new love: 1983 VW Vanagon aircooled 2.0 Wesphalia, with 2 beds, full kitchen, WIFI and mobile office. Lots of awesome there and I’m heading to Salt Lake for the Xterra Ogden race in September.
EDIT: Of course I can’t load the darn photos. Slowman’s instructions seem wrong.
