Call me crazy...

Today I registered myself for the Lumberjack 100. It is a 100 mile mountain bike race in the Manistee National Forest on Saturday, June 14th, 2008. The course consists of four 25 mile loops, 99% of which is singletrack. No easy fire roads or two tracks, and around 13,000 feet of climbing. Luckily the course is a loop so there will also be 13,000 feet of descending. But it's a tough race. They don't call it the Big MF'er for nothing.

I'm sure at this point most readers are thinking, "Why?". This will be physically the most difficult thing I have ever done, but from the first time I read about this race I wanted to do it. I want to complete it, just to say I did. I'm not setting any time goals, just to finish before the cutoff. They start the race at 7am, to give everyone plenty of time. The top pros finish in around 7 hours and the longest finish times are around 12.5 hours. There is a time limit on how late you start your fourth lap to ensure racers are stuck out on the course in the dark.

This should be a fun year to do it, as two of my teammates, Todd and Brad are both racing as well. They registered for singlespeed though. Not me, I need gears for this one. Also, it sounds like the race is very well supported, with multiple aid stations to refill water bottles and take a break along the course.

Preparing for this race will be a lot of work. I had hesitated to register since it is so early in the season, I was worried I might not have enough time to properly train. But who knows what tomorrow or next year will bring so there's no better time than now. Plus training for this will really help me with a lot of my weight loss and fitness goals I am setting for next year. More on those soon.