No Guts No Glory: The Road to Cat 1

No guts, no glory. You hear this all the time right? Husband/Coach Mark went to Arizona this past
weekend to race his first 3 day stage race in over a decade at Valley of the Sun. Yes, he’s a bit older than me but don’t let his age fool you, the man can still get his heart rate above 190. Can you? Not I said the fly. So while I was busy enjoying my mom visiting from Ohio and getting in much needed family time, Mark was off in sunny Arizona. I may have had a bit of FOMO going on and originally had planned to race as well but mom time is more important than bike time me thinks.
Happy 60th to our Madre!

So at the beginning of the season Mark had, after a decade away from racing in the 1/2 Category had
decided that racing masters just wasn’t fun enough (even though most of them are ex-world/regional
champs)and he wanted to see how he stacked up against the current 2’s, most of whom are likely 15-20 years younger. The ultimate goal is to get enough points to at the age of 46 earn his Cat 1 status. If you can find it, you can read all about it on his blog if you can find it.  Mark hasn't had his blog coming out party and is still a bit shy.

Enjoying the bike

I don’t know, but something about this just resonates with me. Yes, he’s my husband and I think he’s
pretty darn cool, but also he is LIVING the motto “dream big”. I’ve been reading a lot of Joel Runyon’s Impossible blog and how NOTHING is really impossible. And that brings me back to Mark. Many people are kind of like, you’re doing what? And you’re how old? And he just keeps working hard. And you know what? I know that he’ll get it done and won’t really say a word about it along the way. Nope, “nothing to see here folks, just riding me bike”.

Sister time on the bike is priceless

The race was not a huge success in garnering any points towards the upgrade, but it was a great season opener showing Mark exactly what he needs to work on…needless to say, we’ll be on our matching Argon’s quite a bit in the upcoming months, racing each other around our local time trial loop. Watch us on Strava to see if I can out-Strava him…for those keeping track, it’s only happened once.

I LOVE his passion for the bike and for his drive to continually get better and succeed. I can’t wait to see the season unfold and will keep you all up to date as it happens!