About a year ago I bought a Specialized Bighit Mountain bike which is a beautiful mountain bike in my opinion. I got it so I could do some crazy downhills and some big urban freeride paths and wasn’t particularly concerned with it’s 45 lb weight.

Over the past year I have been riding my mountain bike in short distance in urban parks only using short burst of energy when approaching a big jump and landing it. About a month ago I started riding mountain bikes with a colleague of mine from work. He typically rode for longer distances on trails so it was completely different type of riding than what I was used to.

After riding like this for about 3 weeks we decided to enter the Greensboro Rock’ N Trot Biathlon. It’s now about a week until race day and I decided I would go for a run to see where I stood in that endurance department. To my dismay, just because you have been riding a mountain bike some doesn’t mean you can go out and run 4 miles at a 6.5 minute pace. I completely overdid it yesterday and my legs are feeling the pain today.

Initially, I thought I might be able to place fairly well but after my run, I will happy if I finish it at all. I am going to load up on Creatine and drink a lot of protein shakes in hopes it will help improve my endurance and ATP production in time for the race next weekend.

Hopefully this will be the first race in a line of racing in which I can improve my performance over a long period of time instead of a single month. Because this will be my first race ever, I must admit, I am a little anxious and intimidated by the guys that have been training for years for this race. I am going to train the best I can over the next week and hope like hell I can at least finish the race. I will be posting more about this over the next week and after the race. I will place my time, average speed, and position as well so you guys can have a good laugh.

Brad Henry

www.seoslap.com