My planned mountain bike ride with a buddy of mine got rained out by storms this morning. I was not real thrilled with that turn of events, and spent my morning drinking coffee, perusing the interweb-o-sephere and “acting like a caged animal” according to Wifey who was working at home today and apparently none to thrilled to have me pacing around, growling in my coffee about not riding.
To avoid any further comments or scowls from Wifey, I thought I better find something else to do. That plan involved an hour on the treadmill doing hill climb intervals at a brisk hiking pace… so not riding, but a way to kill an hour and burn some calories. Thankfully I had found just the visual aid to help me with the first 20 minutes or so; a documentary on Vimeo by Brendan Young called Barkley 100.
The video is about–you guessed it–The Barkley 100, a 100 mile footrace in the mountains of Tennessee. Only fourteen racers out of thousands of participants have ever finished the course. It reminds me a lot of the late, great Montezuma’s Revenge mountain bike race and this is why it grabbed my attention.
I am no runner, and have no aspirations of ever doing a 100 mile foot race. Hell, I don’t think I even have aspirations to do a 100 mountain bike race again! But, given my past interest in endurance events, this video managed to make for great viewing and remind me of why I enjoyed both doing endurance mountain bike races and promoting them through the late XXC Magazine.