Sebring 24 Hour – GoRobGo

Sebring Florida |Rotary Club of Highlands Country

The spirit of competition and comradery flowed through the racers as almost 150 of us lined up at the start line, 40 of those being recumbent riders on the Sebring raceway in Florida on Saturday morning. Each of us preparing to execute our own race strategy, goals, and journey before us!

Personally, I’m chock full of one liner’s that will either get me into trouble or sustain me through some of the World’s toughest endeavors. The one that comes to mind for this event is, “You don’t get ready, you stay ready”. As I prepared for my second ultra-endurance event of a year that will be filled with 20 ultras it’s imperative that I’m always ready, and that I take each course with the seriousness and gracefulness that it requires.

Since solo Race Across America in 2016 I hadn’t ridden a bike in over 3 years. Then about six months ago I started my cycling journey back up with a brand new Bacchetta model bike. The first event was the Borrego Springs 24-hour race last November and unlike the motto that fit this race that race I chose, “Mind over matter; if you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter”. My goal was to stay on the bike as much as possible and endure the pain, exhaustion, and lack of preparedness.

Now that I have a good six months of base training, I’m leading into a year filled with over 10 double century cycling races, a 625-mile (1,000K) race in Oregon in July and culminating in the World’s Toughest Ultra Ironman (Uberman) in October. What does it mean to “stay ready”? For those of us that engage in long distance racing, we often have one major event that we lead up to all year, “our A race” and the entire season might be focused on aspects leading to that event. Once you’ve gone past “normal” ultra-distances in order to go after what I like to call monsters you have to stack smaller monsters “B races” along the way and by the time you get to your intended event your mind, body and spirit are ready.

Throughout this year I will be preparing my body, mind, nutrition, and mental focus so that at the drop of a hat, a blow of a whistle or a firing of a gun, I’m ready. It’s a shift in awareness and perspective and it feels so good to be back in the flow of the way that I was created. For Sebring this played out very well for me. I showed up later than I would have liked, the wind was more pervasive than expected, the route for the last 13 hours of the race was changed within 2 weeks of the event start date, and I took over an hour break after the 12 hour race to celebrate with the other recumbent riders before heading back out on the track to finish the 24 hour course. Having a mindset where my goal of the weekend was to cycle what was in front of me, enjoy the company of the people I encounters, and be joyful make it so that the situations that come before me didn’t rattle me, but just had to adjust my plan a bit on the fly.

This race was a major leap forward in a few aspects of my training. 1) I’ve been struggling with tingling feet after extremely long rides and this event that started even earlier than before at around 8 hours. On the advice of a well experienced cyclist I doubled up my socks thinking in my head there is no way that would work. Sure enough I’m glad I listened to his advice even though I thought he was wrong and now I have a solution to my most pressing physical concern on the long bike rides. 2) My speed endurance is improving. Even with the extra time off the bike and the mild weather conditions my speed increased on a 24-hour course from 3 months ago. I would say I’m at about 70% of my cycling ability level and with the next 5 months of training I should be up above 90% and ready for Race Across Oregon in July. I’m always ready to perform, however there are still a few key races this year where I don’t just want to finish but want to finish strong and set new personal achievement levels for speed endurance.

I’ll be writing race reports on cycling throughout the year focused on nutrition for a race, packing preparation, post-race care, crew logistics, and other aspects. If there is a particular topic you want me to focus on write a note in the comments or send me a message on the website gorobgo.org and I’ll do my best to address the major aspects of endurance cycling from my perspective and experience in a future blog post or respond directly to you. My main take away from Sebring after covering 323.6 miles in 24 hours was immersing myself in the idea of staying ready and when you get to the start line of any event know that you’ve prepared, you have a good mindset and your wits to take on any obstacle that arises before you.