Mike Garrison

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Always striving to push my limits and see how good my best is.

Mike Garrison

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Monday, August 17, 2009

First the hard way

Until Saturday I had never been on a team that flat out won one of the local races. PA Urban, PA Sprint, IndyAR etc. We'd won our division a few times, but never the whole enchilada. Saturday at the 2009 PA Urban Sprint John McInnes, Sumitra Ghate and I managed to finally do it. (At least, it was a finally for me, not sure about them.)

I can't say it went down exactly how I would have expected though. I'm probably in the best shape I've ever been in and figured that would be pretty important to a strong finish for my team. After feeling good on the opening O section (I even towed John for a bit, physics be damned) and fine on the paddle*, I proceeded to feel pretty darn lousy until we were within spitting distance of the finish.

*For the record, I did not feel fine when we managed to flip the canoe. That was a first for me, maybe all of us. I'm thinking the ensuing dousing in White River water may have contributed to how I felt for the majority of the rest of the race. Also, whatever paddling prowess John and I managed to display at the Midget race in July had evaporated as we staggered about the White River like drunken sailors. All Sumi could do about it was sit there and get hit in the head by John's paddle...

As soon as we got on the bikes I had no kick in my legs at all. Thinking I just needed to loosen up I let John pull on the bike for a bit. Turned out that "bit" ended up being the majority of the next 3 hours of the race. I don't think I slowed us down any, but I sure didn't do much to help to push the pace much. With all of the riding I've been doing I was really hoping to do some work on the bike for this race. But, the only work I ended up doing was call directions from the back of the pace line.

And that right there is the beauty of adventure racing. It's a team sport and when a team is working well together it's possible to overcome someone having a bad race. Both of them were constantly asking me if I had eaten enough, drank enough and was taking my electrolytes. (If you're not at least somewhat annoyed by the frequency of these questions from your teammates, they're not asking them enough).

Despite not knowing where the heck we were relative to the other top teams due to some confusion with the opening O, we pushed hard and stayed steady. By the time we completed Stage 1, we departed onto Stage 2 definitively in first. No other teams had started that stage yet.

This is where I finally started to find my legs. After 4+ hours of just hanging in there all it took was a little adrenaline brought on by the approaching finish line to get me going at least a little bit and help push the pace. We saw a couple other teams out on the roads but weren't exactly sure how they were doing or how much of the course they had done so we just raced like they were right on our tails. Even the final 3-4 miles after solving the word scramble*, we continued to push the whole way to the finish.

*For the record, although we were in fact trying to "solve to win", we felt that "loves to win" was pretty appropriate too. (Huh, Jay and the volunteer at CP32/33 might be the only ones that get that...)

I haven't done a whole lot of racing in individual sports. Never done a tri, only a couple of marathons and half marathons and one cycling road race. I do know that the few times that I've felt awful while racing are pretty darn miserable. Encouragements from fellow runners/riders can help, but it's not quite the same as a teammate that's determined to keep you focused and in the game.

I frequently see "tweets" and facebook statuses (stati?) and blog posts about how someone blew up or melted down or failed epically at a triathlon or running race or whatever. Had I been by myself Saturday, I'd probably be writing something similar. But, since AR is a team sport I'm not. And I think that's pretty cool.

A little bit of reluctance to give up and some teamwork and you can turn a crap day into a pretty good day. Heck, you might even come in first...

posted by Garrison at 2:31 PM 0 Comments

Monday, August 10, 2009

Ready to go! (I think)

Shirt with no zipper?

Check.

Rested legs?

Check.

Smile?

Eh, I think so, depends if I see the camera or not. At the very least I can limit the grimacing.

I think I'm about as ready as I'm going to to be for the 2nd TNT race at Town Run Trail Park.

We shall see!

posted by Garrison at 11:59 PM 0 Comments

Planet Adventure AR Clinics

This Wednesday is the second "Basic Navigation and AR101 Clinic" being hosted by Planet Adventure. The first one was two weeks ago and had quite a good turnout of neary 30 people. Most folks were there for the beginner stuff, but a couple were looking for some more in depth training with naviagation, UTM's and just general AR stuff (mostly wanting to know what it's like to take on your first 24+ hour race).

I volunteered to help out with the advanced nav and AR portion of the clinic. "Advanced" of course is a relative term and in this case it mostly meant "more advanced than someone who has never done this before". As it turns out I have the qualifications for that type of advanced.

My little group started out just talking UTM's, which is one of those things that's really easy to explain to somone in person, but really tricky to convey well in writing*. It didn't take long to get them comfortable with UTM's, so we moved on to other AR related stuff.

*- I tried to come up with a one sheet primer on UTM's but failed miserably. I'll hopefully get it done some day because I have seen a lot of UTM tutorials out there and there isn't one that I've seen that is "perfect" for the complete novice.

It was a lot of fun and we ended up being out there for over 2 1/2 hours talking AR. We covered everything from gear to food to strategy to teammates. Feedback from the beginners session was really positive as well. Just an hour or so talking about the sport with experienced people really seemed to ease peoples minds before their first race.

Adventure racing really is a great sport for first timers. Pretty much every race I've been to has had lots of helpful people from staff to volunteers to racers. I can say from experience that a first adventure race is WAY less intimidating than a first road race (cycling).

Hopefully we'll keep seeing these clinics and maybe even some discussion sessions specifically for more experienced folks to talk about what they have found does and doesn't work.


posted by Garrison at 1:52 PM 1 Comments

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Susan's fight

Susan Nelson, wife of "Fat Cyclist" Elden Neslon (Fatty) passed away last night after a long and courageous fight against breast cancer.

I started reading Elden's blog about a year and a half ago. Mostly because it was funny and most of the humor was in the context of something that I enjoyed, cycling. He's written on everything from his successful efffort in getting Bob Roll's head shaved to the chemical and physical properties of incredibly stale energy food.

However, I quickly learned there was a lot more to his life than riding his bikes and writing
funny stuff. His wife was dying of cancer.

He didn't keep it to himself nor did he use it as a focal point for pity from others (or himself) through the very public forum that is a blog. He told their story and together they started to do what they could to fight back at the disease that was slowly killing her and countless others. "Win Susan" and "Fight like Susan" became a rallying cry for those that chose to spend their time and money fighting cancer by raising awareness, money or both.

Over the past year Elden got very involved with the Livestrong Foundation and through his efforts and those of the 500 members of "Team Fatty" over $500,000 has been raised to help with cancer research. Having a loved one taken by a disease like cancer is a very personal experience but their willingness to share their story with the world inspired many others to join in the fight. And because of this there is an extra half million dollars to fight cancer so far. (Who knows how much will be raised by the end of this year alone thanks to their effforts?)

I don't know about you, but I think that's pretty
damned impressive. So take a minute to check
out his blog, maybe pass on your condolences and consider donating.

Heck, if you do it now you might even win this bike--->

Contests like the one that is going on currently, where this Orbea bike is the prize (thanks to the generosity of others) are just one of the ways that Fatty has come up with to help entice people to join the fight.


posted by Garrison at 8:47 AM 0 Comments