Passing through Leslie, AR This race, initially scheduled for June 6, 2020 has been postponed to late October. I had my sights set on doing this event back in June 2019 (the event's inaugural year), but I chickened out, fearful of the demands of the hilly, buggy course and the hot weather. This summer, better trained and prepared and with nothing scheduled in the first half of June to keep me from going to ride it, I was determined to give it a good go as an Individual Time Trial (ITT). I had an ambitious plan to cover the 1,000 miles of the Arkansas High Country Race in about 8.5 days, a schedule that left no room for major setbacks or breakdowns. The goal was to be done by June 11th, but I had a couple of spare days since I didn't need to be back home in Texas until the end of the day on the 14th. About seven other people were doing roughly the same thing, some starting at other points along the course two or three days after me.  Day 1 Fayetteville to ne...

On Friday and Saturday, September 25 th  and 26 th , 2015, I did a 24-hour bicycle time trial at The Texas Time Trials in Glen Rose, TX. The race, which consisted of as many laps around a hilly 26.4 mile loop of farm roads as one could do, started for me at 5 pm Friday afternoon. When I started on Friday afternoon with thirty or so other crazy people, there were several even crazier folks already out there on the course racing 500 miles. Endurance cycling doesn’t have a lot of practitioners, so you get to line up with some of the very best guys in the sport. José Bermúdez, the guy I supported for Race Across America (RAAM) this summer, typically does the 500 mile race, as does Norm Hageman, a Texan about my age who also finished RAAM this year. Chris Hopkinson, a Brit who has finished RAAM several times, raced in the same 24-hour race I was doing (he would set a course record that day). It’s like going out to play intramural football and finding out you’re playing against Tom Brady...

BLUEBONNETS AND WATER CROSSINGS / 214 MILE RACE TEXAS RAAM 2016 The Texas Race Across America event on March 18, 19 of 2016 featured races of nearly 400 miles and another of 214 miles. I did the shorter race. The start was in Marble Falls, west of Austin on the Colorado River. The course was a big loop through the beautiful Texas Hill Country down to Comfort, over to Kerrville, up west of Fredericksburg and back. Most riders (including all the 400 milers, I believe) had a support vehicle resupplying them and helping them with navigation. I rode in the randonneur division, which meant that I would be self-supported, relying on gas stations for resupply, and calling in my own checkpoints at three time stations the race directors used to help track the riders. The staggered start was at 5 a.m. and it was cold and already extremely windy. I was set up with about 130 oz. of fluids, stuff to fix two flats, headlights and taillights, and a little nylon bag strapped to the top tube just behind...

Texas Race Across America Course Map Back in September, to prep my bike for a 24 hour race, I put a little piece of silver duct tape on the bridge of my aerobars and wrote “Be present” on it with a Sharpie. The words have long since worn off, but the piece of tape is still a reminder for me in an ultradistance bike race to focus on how I’m riding at the moment and block everything else out. That mantra turned out to be extremely useful in the Texas Race Across America (RAAM) 400, a 389 mile race around the Texas Hill Country that I did the weekend of March 25th and 26, 2017. In 2016 I did the 214-mile race self-supported, which meant that I carried everything I needed and stopped at gas stations to resupply myself. I was very pleased with how the race went, but the morning after as Margaret and I got up and had a leisurely breakfast, I remembered that most of the 400-mile racers were still out there chugging along through the night, and, in the words of Shakespeare, “I held my manhood ...