Yesterday the Laser Cats got an amazing, ebullient text message from Sophia who was SO JAZZED on endorphins after doing her morning road work. That is 100% how I felt after going to my first-ever Belmont Thursday night mountain bike race. Through a years-long perfect life storm of weird work hours, injury, and surgery/rehab, I’d never been able to attend. In a weird way, I was kinda ok with this: the Belmont can be super intimidating and it seemed like it would only be more so when shared with a bunch of fast trail wizards.

I’ll admit it has been a mission of mine for some time to make peace with the Belmont; to gain some semblance of competence and proficiency with it. Continue reading →