Yes, that's right, blurry people. How does an ordinary person become blurry? They train. In the dull winter months they sit down with calendars and select events they want to train for and they ride their bikes and they eat powders and they measure the amount of carbohydrates vs. proteins vs. fats in every meal and they regulate caffeine and alcohol intake, if they take any in at all. Then they ride their bikes some more and some of them lift weights and some of them do yoga and some of them spend time at higher altitudes and some of them pre-ride the course. Then they ride their bikes some more and weigh their pre-race meals on scales and warm up on trainers they set up behind their cars in the parking lots of aforementioned events while wearing heart monitors. Then they ride their bikes real fast.
It's easy to adopt a dismissive attitude toward these people, and anti-train by preparing for races with a lot of beer and pizza and chocolate cake. Recently, however, I'm wondering if the blurries are onto something.
I am trying unsuccessfully to recognize the width of the line separating an ordinary person on a mountain bike from a blurry person on a mountain bike. This weekend, I am going to try to ride my bike harder than I ever have, and because this terrifies me, I tend to want to eat a lot of powders, count carbs, inhale only unpolluted air, and rest my head each night on a satin cloth draped over a pile of happy puppies. I'm willing to try anything that will help make the upcoming endurance event feel a little easier, which is dumb, because if I wanted the endurance event to not require so much endurance, I should've enrolled for the 1/2 race instead of the full.
So I've been going a little crazy. I've made my own energy bars, and I know exactly how many carbs are in them, and how often I need to cram one in my energy bar hole. I'm not really okay with this. While I am in decent physical shape, I just don't have time to be in the kind of shape it takes to be blurry, so being overly scrupulous with my diet doesn't make sense. How many seconds will this piece of chocolate cake add to my time? Will it make those last few miles hurt a little more? Cake ache seems to be a phenomenon of which blurry people are blissfully unaware.
The 1/2 Blurry Race I should've entered
The Full Blurry
What it comes down to, possibly, is whether I'm trying to take care of my body so that I can survive this event (reasonable) or whether I think I'm preparing for success (ridiculous, seeing as how moments ago I knelt to pick up a fumbled slice of pizza and it made my legs tired).
It's time for me to get in the car and drive to the site of the race. The only question is will I take with me this endurance drink mix or this endurance beer drink?
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