Ready to Suffer in 2012? Yeah, me too.

It's actually called "racing", but the formula for doing good in a "race' is 2 fold. Firstly, who has prepared the best through training, nutrition, and recovery. Secondly, how bad can you suffer? Do you shut it down when it gets hard and only go at a certain threshold or do you ignore your survival instincts telling you to slow down and say "damn the torpedoes" to push at a breakthrough pace? I like to pride myself on suffering better then most. When the pain, lactic acid, maximum heart rate, and lungs gasping for air come on I actually feed off of it and push harder. There are a lot of guys out there in better shape then me that I can occasionally beat because I suffer with the best of them. Or so I like to think anyway. Hopefully it doesn't come to me doing this in the woods:

So 2012 is here and it's time to get my planned races together. I won't bore you with every detail for the entire year, but hit you with the highlights of the Spring races.
First race of the season is going to be the Southern Classic Series race at Tsali. This is a really fun trail in the Smokey mountains of NC. There is actually a good bit of climbing - 3 big long lung busters to be exact, but the trail is really fast and fun plus the scenery is great. This is a typical XC distance race meaning it's 1-2 hours in time.
Next up will be the 6 hours of Warrior Creek. Yeah, you heard it right. 6 hours constant of doing laps on a 13 mile loop. He or she with the most laps in the shortest time after 6 hours wins. Remember what I said about suffering? Again, the trails here are great - super flowy and fun to ride. A few climbs that start getting hard around hour 3 or 4.
After Warrior it's back to a shorter XC distance race in Spartanburg SC. This is another one of the Southern Classic series races. At this distance your intensity is a lot higher and you ride close to maximum heart rate for the duration. On the longer races you have to pace yourself better and just be strong and steady.
The week after Spartanburg I'm headed to the mountains of Tennesse - to Ducktown to be exact. The Cohutta 100 miler is going down at the Ocoee whitewater center. I'm not doing the hundo, but hitting the Big Frog 65 miler instead. Never been there, but I hear there is a lot of climbing. Should be fun. Maybe I can drop some fools on the longer descents?

After the Big Frog I have a couple weeks before the Riverfront Classic. A Southern Classic race right here in Charlotte at the US Whitewater Center. These are my local trails, so I'd like to do good at this one. It's a 18-20 mile race, and is deceptively tough. The climbs are short and punchy and they wear you flat out. It's at the end of May which can get hot too. Usually it's the first real hot weekend and your body hasn't had time to acclimate yet. Last year I think there were 50+ dnf's(did not finish) from the heat. it got me too, but I pushed to finish.

As summer gets closer I'll update y'all with the summer schedule.