One of our mates has started a ‘training programme’. He has a ‘coach’. He is thinking about his entry in a ‘race’. I use inverted commas for his versions of these things because they all defy normal definitions.
Working backwards from the ‘race’… the event of his dreams is the Whaka 100. It’s more of a nightmare, and unless you are very special you won’t be ‘racing’. You will be grovelling along, hoping you don’t run out of something before the finish. Food, energy, daylight, those sorts of things.
By ‘coach’ he means a dude who is a freak of nature. Without giving the game away, the guy he has signed on with can win an XC race on an Enduro bike, can win an Enduro more or less at will, and a single speed championship if he can be bothered. I’ve seen him do these things, and look like he was taking a spin around the block. To my mind, a coach should be able to empathise on those days when the programme doesn’t intersect with the energy levels required to do strenuous activities. Like getting out of bed for example. Not sure this one can.
And by ‘training programme’ we are talking about a list of things, allocated day-by-day, which if performed with enthusiasm will result in a shining triumph on that far-off day of judgement.
Our mate owned up to this stuff when we met up for a casual ride we had agreed on earlier in the week, possibly before the ‘programme’ was invented. The idea was to dawdle to the top of the forest, and ride the jungle trail up there. Then see what transpired.
On the day we didn’t get at it until about 530, by which time these late summer evenings only provide a few hours of light to play with, and nobody likes to miss dinner. So we sort of shelved the original plan, and decided to do a loop of the lower trails.
Neither of these schemes matched the ride du jour a la the ‘programme’. That called for a one hour road ride. Then, just before we hit the third trail, our mate realised he had been looking at the wrong day, and what we should be doing was something else, can’t remember what.
I do recall what it wasn’t: hooning around a selection of old school XC-ish trails, cackling like fools and doing skids.
That’s what we did.
Don’t know what our mate put in his training diary. I reckon LMAO would do.