I'm feeling kinda funny but not

Past the Meh-way Point of the "season" and after the Mancation, is there anything else to look forward to in 2011?

Yes.

I think I'm leaning towards racing at the North Carolina Single Speed Championship coming up on Oct 22. Put together by a friend, sponsored by friends, a short drive away (a bit longer of a ride), a course I like, and only single speeders on the course so no one has to say "Get out of my way, I'm on a single speed" on the climbs. I'm somewhere around 95% go on this race, reserving 5% for the possibility that my judgement may currently be clouded by the fact that I am going on my fifth day without a beer.

After that, there is the Double Dare in the Pisgah National Forest; back-to-back 12 hour days separated by a six hour break for sleeping, eating, and rethinking bad decisions. I don't want to do too much re-hashing of my previous experience, but I owe this race another try. Captain Morgan and myself put in a valiant effort in 2008 on fixed gears to almost end the first day tied for 2nd place, but we finished in a state of hypothermia ten minutes past the cut-off time and were DQ'ed. This time Zac and I will be going for the win, but our bikes will be freewheeling, and our seatposts will be properly assembled before we go into the woods.

I called Eric "PMBAR Honcho" Wever the other night to ask him about water filters. In an effort to save weight, I thought maybe carrying something like this might reduce the amount of water I would have to carry.

I couldn't remember how I got through 12 hours and 10 minutes of riding all those years ago, but thanks to my time traveling blog, I was able to find that information.

In 2008 I consumed:

28oz of water

22oz of Gatorade (I lost a full bottle of Gatorade somewhere in the darkness)

18oz of PBR

Victory for finding the pertinent information, but fail on thinking it would help. There will no longer be PBR on the course, so I can not include that in my hydration plans this year. A better plan must be planned. I plan on planning that plan sometime in the near future. At least that's the plan as of now.

So that's it, two more races in 2011. One that I probably can't win, and one that could possibly be won if we do everything right and nothing goes wrong for 24 hours.

How hard could that be?

One more post on Monday, and then the Mancation begins. Speaking of which, I'll be hanging out in the Denver airport for eight hours on Tuesday waiting for Big Ring and Curvy Butt to show up if anyone wants to sit in Starbucks and play "caffeine chicken" with me.