History

A week ago, yes it did take this long to get around to write about it, I completed my first 100-miler. In the spring of this year I had some visions of grander of doing two of them, Wilderness 101 and Shenandoah Mountain 100. But when the time came to sign up for Wild101, I chickened out.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. This is supposed to be a bit of the history of how I got here. Back in '99 I rediscovered biking, more specifically, mountain biking. I haven't been on the bike since I was a kid, but just one ride had me completely re-hooked, is that a word? I went and bought my first "real" mountain bike and proceeded to ride it fairly regularly for the next 6 years.

However, just like all of us, I had a severe case of upgradatitis! And by '04, after having replaced every component on my bike except for the frame, I was itching for a new bike. I had my mind firmly set on Santa Cruz SuperLight. However, such and upgrade wasn't in my budget at the time. In retrospect, I'm glad it wasn't.

In '05 a friend of mine got a Surly Karate Monkey. And started talking about all the single speeding stuff. I was curious and one day in the fall I went out for a ride, put my gears into 32X15 and didn't touch the shifters for the entire hour or so that I rode that night. I've seen the light!!! Within a week that 1X9 was converted to SS (I got really lucky, because the magic gear on that bike was 32X16, no tensioner needed!) And started researching proper SS bikes.

Within a month or so of reading all the reviews and information I could get my hands on about SS, I came to the conclusion that since I'm going SS, I might as well, and should, go all the way and get myself a fully rigid 29er SS! A little detour from FS 26er geared, don't you say? A little more research and I had placed the order for On One Inbred frame and fork. While waiting for it, I started putting together the components. Finally, in early July of '06 I had my bike together in all it's glory.

However, before I got that bike I got talked into doing 12 hours of Allamuchy. For which I was still riding my old converted Trek. We were going to do it a two man team, but my buddy came down with a bad case of flu or something less than 48 hours before the race, and it was too late to pull out without loosing the entry fee. The only viable option I had was either to find a new partner in crime (didn't happen) or change our entry to a solo ride! Which I did. That was probably the hardest ride of my life! Despite the fact that I did 8 laps, "only" 56 miles, half of SM100! The entire ride was in the rain, mud galore!

And I was not prepared at all, neither mentally, nor physically, nor with nutrition. I was completely spent!!! But I also LOVED it!!! And since then was thinking about what other endurance races I could do.

Thus I was coming into '07 with plans of doing many endurance races. As it turned out I would do only one... SM100. I did attempt to do Stoopid 50 in State College PA, but had to pull out half way thru with a major mechanical.