John Stamsted, a pioneer of 24hr solo racing, once said, “This form of racing is so hard that no one out there does it for the money, and if they did it would have to be extremely large sums of money before anyone would voluntarily make themselves suffer that long”.
I hadn’t been to Drummond Island in about 18 years. My memories of this land lie deep in tales of catching whopping perch and walleye with my father, and bears sneaking up on campers to help themselves to any of their food placed within a bear’s reach. Long before I ever swung my leg over a top tube and tried to beat another person to the line I formed my fond impressions of this island.
Years later…older, perhaps wiser, I decided to venture back up to Drummond, this time to race my bike in the Michigan Endurance Series 12 Hours of Drummond Island. I found it only fitting to invite my father and the rest of my family to help support me during the race as well as revisit the magic that I was exposed to so young.
There were other bigger races with more prestige and prize purse I could of choose this weekend, but this race meant something more than any cash prime or winning check could ever hold. This event was more of a family vacation that happened to have a race in it.
Race day brought about torrential rain and a bone chilling 52 degrees. As I kitted up in my warm protective car, Angela stared at me with a look of disbelief and doubting intrigue. “I’m just amazed at how excited and positive you can be to be racing in such terrible conditions”, she commented. The week prior to this race I had stayed with Ray D. up at the Buck-N-A cabin for a bit of a late season rest/training camp. In that time I realized that it’s a good thing to concede that “you can’t win em all” and that not everything works out according to plan. Mike Tyson once said, “Anyone can plan to win a fight until you get clocked in the jaw, it’s what you do after that, that matters”.
So I rolled to the line a few minutes before the start. I wasn’t too worried about any competition posing a threat. It was mostly a race against myself, the clock, and my ghosts of the past. The gun fired, I took the hole shot, and didn’t look back until about a mile in. John Cowan, Petoskey resident, fellow teacher, and all around great cyclist, stayed with my wheel and we began to trade pulls and converse at the same time. Unfortunately after a few miles of putting it down we realized we completely lost the course. We had to turn around and start from the back of the field! We ended up working our way back to the front by the end of the lap and wound up front running the rest of the race.
About three hours into the race my hands and feet were numb and my bike could barely shift anymore due to the amount of mud it accumulated. I wasn’t having fun at this point. I rolled through the pits, completely changed my clothes, switched my bike and was off. From this point on, I began to have fun. Although I was leading the race, I was still in a great deal of pain and discomfort. Just as I started to ask myself, “Why do I do this”, I began to embrace this feeling of suffering and drew from it.
Some may label it a sick attraction…why do we voluntarily choose to suffer? I’ve found there is something about persevering from point A to point B that no prize money or notoriety can ever take precedence over.
I ended up winning the race without much contest, and I began to question again why I choose this event. As I looked in the faces of my family I quickly became comforted in my reasons.
So why do we do this? It’s not for the money…it’s for something far more.
