Sunburnt.

SUNBURNT.

I am sunburnt. Every time I move I can feel the top layer of my skin getting ready to quit on me. The past three days I have covered 70 miles via bike and foot with 13,000ft of climbing ranging from 3,000ft to 9,000ft in the sky. I have seen more donkeys and bob cats than I have seen humans out here. 

Rocks buck me off my bike like a wild bull trying to throw me. Some sections I crawl at a snail's pace, while others I float effortlessly as I hear the whine of my bike gears spin. My company has been two audio books or the same 15 songs on repeat. I feel less lonely out here than I do sitting in a coffee shop in dead center manhattan. These trails are a fight but at the same time they are a companion that I have known for a long time. Every hill is a reminder of the depth of the relationship, a level of accountability. 

I hope that the athletes feel the same way that I do. I hope they are empowered by the challenge rather than crushed by it. I hope the scrapes and blisters remind them that they are alive. This isn’t an F45 class, this is a mission, this is a race to survive the mountains. 

As I sign off to go back into the woods I want to leave you with a thought. Are you a man or are you a picture? I struggle with this often. Most people I meet these days are pictures. They design their whole lives for this daily curated image to show the world what they’ve done. If you are always busy telling people how great you are then you’re probably not doing great things. Put down the phone, go conquer the world.