I knew as soon as I thought of it, that I pretty much had to do it. I was suddenly, and inexplicably -- as I'm not usually prone to sentimentality, under the spell of nostalgia. I had no other recourse but to indulge it, besides a nice ride would be a great way to break up the monotony of the drive.
"The Mesa" harkens back to my beginnings as a cyclist, as it was the course of my first ever bike race. All of 14 miles, of pavement. Ironically, on my first mountain bike, which I didn't even ride off-road until a couple years after leaving Meeker. This was 1989(8?). Mountain biking was still a pretty new sport, though not so new that it didn't have magazines dedicated to it -- magazines which impressionable 12-year-olds could find in their local grocery store, and decide that they simply must do that. We were of pretty modest means, so a $400 mtn. bike was out of the realm of possibility as a birthday or Christmas gift, but in a town like Meeker, even people of modest means often owned horses. I wasn't all that interested in horses, so selling mine was a quick & easy route to owning a shiny, red, Trek Antelope 830.
That left one problem. Where to ride it? There were no trails that I knew of and Meeker didn't (and still doesn't) even have a bike shop, much less any mountain bikers. So, even though I was able to acquire a mountain bike, I was unable to do much more on it than I did on the beater it replaced.
Meeker did, however, have an annual bike race, as part of the town's 4th of July festivities. What better use could there be for my new bike than to race it? To add a bit of drama to the whole affair, the gauntlet had already been thrown by a rather unlikeable classmate, "You're doing the 4th of July race? I was thinking of doing the 4th of July race...".
So, I had the equipment -- a mtn. bike with knobbies, perfect for a road race, right? And I had the motivation -- "Must. Destroy. Wade. Schultz." All that was left to do was prepare.
Knowing next to nothing about any sort of training or race prep, I did what seemed perfectly natural, to my 12-year-old mind. Nearly every day, sometimes after swim-practice, sometimes later in the afternoon, I simply hopped on my bike, and went out and rode the course as fast as I could, and noted the finishing time. It worked, up to a point, in that my times steadily improved, but I could never attain the goal I had set of 45 min. or less. My best times were within a minute or less of that goal time, but I just couldn't do it in 45 minutes. This frustrated me to no end.
Come race day, I easily beat the field, in my age group (all 3 or 4 of them), and the kid who I wanted to destroy wasn't even there. "With his dad, fishing, in Alaska", was the story I got upon returning to school in the fall. However, none of that seemed to matter. I was too busy being pissed off that I still didn't break 45 minutes on race day, despite having set a new personal-best, bringing me that much closer to the elusive 45 minute mark.
All of which brings us, finally, to this morning's ride. I'm happy to announce that I totally kicked my 12-year-old-ass! 35 minutes bay-bee!
That's right, all of this was so that I could go ride my sub 17lb road bike on a mostly-flat 14 mile loop, to beat a time set by a 12-year-old, about 20 years ago, on a 30 lb. mountain bike with knobbies.
It's fun to be petty sometimes.
I did the obligatory nostalgia-cruise around town too. Checked out the house(s) we used to live in...
the old schools...
etc...
Tomorrow maybe I'll do a real ride.
