The title of the blog is a quote from a speech that Stormin Norman Schwarzkopf gave to the graduating class of the Naval Academy in 1991. Being a young Marine at the time the speech was given, I heard that quote spoken and misspoken more times than I want to remember. Even though it was given by an Army General and contains War and bleeding in it, it's not just about violence... actually it's not about violence at all. It's about training and dedication to do what needs to be done when nobody is watching, the drive to do the difficult things when you don't want or need to do them. To understand that to achieve long term goals there is often some suffering in the present that needs to be done. The more you prepare for something, the easier it is to perform well when it's go time.
Being on or near the Summer Solstice it's almost a given that the Solstice Gravel Grinder is going to be on a hot day, this year that day seemed especially hot but I am sure I've said that just about every year. Sweat was a necessity rather than an option. Team 3 Cog Night signed up for the 100 mile co-ed single speed relay but at the last minute the other team had to drop out leaving us the only remaining single speed team. As long as we finished, we would be the single speed champions and we could have just coasted in on that and taken the victory given not really a victory earned.
As a team we all decided that instead of just cruising onto the podium. we would go out and give it our all and race as if we weren't the only single speed relay team. Like last year we were going to race against the geared teams and see how the cards played out. Jackie led us out and set the tone for the team with an impressive ride, covering the first 30 mile leg in just over 2 hours with a 14 mph pace.
I took the handoff in Burchard for the second leg of the relay and held up my end of the deal turning in a 14.3 average over the 40 mile leg for a time of 2 hours and 50 minutes.
Justin did the anchor leg and continued the fast pace with a time just over 2 hours for his 30 mile leg, also with a 14 mph pace.
Well, if you've been paying attention at all you know how the race ends... we won. However that's not the end of the story, 3 Cog Night turned in a great performance and we actually would have finished second out of all the relay teams if there were not a single speed relay team category and only by about 18 minutes. Looking at the overall standings for the Hundy, we placed 18th as a team out of 101 Hundy racers. I think we achieved our goal of giving it our best effort even if it wasn't necessary to take home the hardware and everyone on the team killed it in tough conditions. There were 31 DNFs in the Hundy, it was that hot out there. I hope that the single speed relay sticks, this is the first year for it and I feel like there will be other teams that will race it, seems more and more people are picking up a single speed lately.
Video from the Solstice.
