Getting Beat has NEVER felt this Good

After some incredibly bad luck last weekend in Fayetteville, Eli was really needing another race. Hitting another race really quickly after a bad one has a way of washing away the pain. We found that Landahl Park in Blue Springs was having a dual enduro/XC race today... and that none other than Matt Johnson was part of it. Landahl was the scene of XC races for me 20+ years ago.  It was always a rough, brutal course and I liked it that way.  So we got up early and drove to Landahl this morning, and Eli got himself a selfie with the king of selfies.

Not to be outdone, I had to get a selfie with Matt as well. 

Annnnnnnd.... the after-selfie. What transpired over a two hour period was worthy of an epic novel, so I'll spare you every detail and tell you the important stuff. The course was so much more brutal than it was in 2002. Even with our modern full-suspension bikes and 29 inch wheels and tubeless tires, it was bone-rattling goodness. 21 miles of rocks, boulders, roots, switchbacks, and mayhem. I started well, and within 2 miles Eli passed me. Yep, we raced together in the "Expert" or "Cat 1" class. I fought very hard and had a few glimpses of my youngest boy kicking my ass. But I never caught him. He finished 8th out of 23, and I finished about 20 SECONDS behind him in 9th. How is that for a fairytale passing of the torch?  And Matt was not only the celebrity selfie guy, he was the announcer.  He made it painfully clear to the audience that he was enjoying the father/son battle.

Eli and I enjoyed it, too. He's really good and wants to get better. Best of all, he loves it and doesn't have the angst and emotional baggage surrounding racing like I do. And lest anyone think that I let him win, I present my heartrate data from Strava. Bad picture, but knowing that my max heartrate at 56 years old is only 173...yeah. I was going as hard as this old body could go. 

What a great way to lose. 

 

Happy Birthday Eli - Keep up the good work!

Although he isn't following in my footsteps, our youngest man is becoming a fine cyclist in his own right. He turns 17 today, something I never could imagine 17 years ago. It's always been hard to wrap my head around the future and what it holds. A couple weeks ago, Eli entered his first Cat 1 local race and did a bang-up job. It was a hard nasty race and he did fantastic. Still 16 in this photo, happy as he can be holding his expensive mountain bike that has been thrashed for two hours in the mud. Sigh.

Never would I have thought he'd be doing what he's doing today. He was just a little dude with a bright future, whatever that might be. Not really thinking about bike racing then. Not really thinking about high school or college. Not really thinking about much except how to keep him in clean diapers and how to get him to fall asleep before 2am.

Just last weekend, he and I took a guy's trip to Arkansas for one of their State Series mountain bike races. Arkadelphia, to be exact. This was the dam just below Iron Mountain, and it was glorious. Eli was signed up to race, but I wasn't. There was a few moments on Sunday morning where registration was still open and I was feeling good, but something told me not to. I went on this trip with the idea that I was going to be the pit crew, so I just stuck with that plan.

Since this was a USA Cycling race, he had to race his category. We tried to sign him up to race Category 1 but he was technically only a Cat 3. We petitioned USAC and they upgraded him to Cat 2. The course was fantastic and Eli was quickly out front. He and another Cat 2 rider were flat out flying, passing through the older Cat 1's and looking every bit like they could have raced the higher category.

This was exactly why I didn't race. Why I shouldn't have raced. This moment right here. I was able to witness his first real mountain bike win. I was beyond proud. I'm sure everyone at the race knew that I was the proud father from my shouting. 

Worth every ounce of effort. I constantly forget that he's so young because he carries himself like a much older person. I've worked very hard not to push my kids into things that I like to do, to not live vicariously through them. When I say that it has been 100% his decision to take up cycling, it's the truth. He even does it for different reasons, and gets something completely different from it than I do. He is truly someone a lot of people can look up to and gain inspiration from. To say that I'm proud of the person he has become is such an understatement. 

Happy birthday, Eli!