Chapter 2
“there are known knowns;
there are known unknowns;
there are also unknown unknowns” “D. Rumsfeld (2002)”
In 2019, two cycling friends (Buckles & Mr. GoFast*) suggested I throw my name into the lottery for the Leadville 100. The odds were long and my foresight short. I dispensed with ‘look before you leap’ and embraced ‘he who hesitates is lost’. It was low-risk, high-reward (pun intended) since I’d never heard of anyone getting into Leadville via the lottery. That holds to this day. Shockingly, I got in, and like a Vegas gambler on a winning streak with no sense of when to walk away (Rogers 1979), I also threw my name into the lottery for the Unbound 200. In early 2020, as soon as I found out I’d also won a lottery slot for the Unbound 200, I got a coach (my first since college Lacrosse) to put me on a ‘“training plan”. In tackling an epic adventure, there are two related roads to failure. Failure to plan and failure to know what to plan for. The latter; that is, those things that we don’t know we don’t know, as the original controversial Donald once opined, tend to really be a jack-in-the-box force of bum-f*ck*ry. On the other hand, as long as failure includes survival, it tends to result in the most entertaining part of the story. For 30yrs I erred on the side of a good story in my benign neglect to plan, so I would be remiss to describe my training regiment (including getting a coach) for Unbound200 without mentioning my experience in 2019 at Leadville.
In short, I had a minor mechanical problem and I underestimated the effects of 3,500 meters (~11,500ft for you imperialist retro-grouch cretins).
Basically, the altitude crushed me, strangling my executive function so I failed to eat much of anything but crow (and then only at the end). It didn’t help that I taco’d my front wheel in the first 3 miles and planned to stop at each upcoming aid-station but never did. I’d never felt worse after a ride. Ever. If my Dad had not been there to scrape me off the pavement I would have deliriously called in a medevac.
An extended tl:dr description is available on Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/2608241561
It was with this experience in mind that I decided having a coach tell me what to do might be a good idea.
*Steis’, & Cordaro’s names have been altered to protect the guilty.
References: Rogers, K. & Shlitz, D. The gambler (1978).
Rumsfeld, D. (2002) "Defense.gov News Transcript: DoD News Briefing – Secretary Rumsfeld and Gen. Myers, United States Department of Defense (defense.gov)". February 12, 2002. Archived from the original on March 20, 2018.
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