I’m five weeks out from doing my first race. Moab Rocks is a 3-day mountain bike stage race happening the first week of April.

There are moments of regret about making poor choices but lately, there have been far more moments of entertaining the possibility of actually pulling this off.

To be clear, I will be participating, hanging on by a thread, not racing. My goals are are focused on getting through each day with less hating my life and regretting my poor decisions and more whoop whoop and enjoying the experience …. to whatever degree is possible. DFL is perfectly ok if there’s still a smile on my face.

Having never participated in an event like this before I don’t even know what to expect. The course profiles scare me, but at least I know there will be suffering. There’s “I’m out of my depth and I’m an idiot for having thought I could do this” suffering. There’s also “damn, this is hard but I just need to keep pushing” suffering. The former wears you down mentally and cripples your spirit, the latter is a system to keep you turning the pedals over. My commitment to my training is my tool to keep me away from the rabbit hole of thinking I can’t, and staying focused on the task at hand – one pedal stroke at a time.

I have 3 solid months of training behind me and wrapped up this training block on a good note with 3 good days in a row.  Recovery week next and then hitting it hard for one final training block before it’s go time. My instinct is to say I’ve got this – but do I?