Lowell Rouge 100 – Who Really Needs an Offseason
Lining up before sunrise The month of October was my planned offseason. Marji was done, I was generally pretty worn out from a long (but fun) summer of hard rides and races. It was time to recover, reset and relax. Turns out I’m really bad at one of those. Joe Cantell had asked me early in the year if I’d be interested in racing the Lowell Rouge 100 with him. Being someone who likes to race and maybe doesn’t always put the most effort into forethought I said yes. Time went by and I sort of forgot about the race. I had a summer of ultra endurance mountain biking to focus on. My schedule even allowed me to get in enough National Ultra Endurance race to qualify for the series and earn a placing. Roughly three weeks before Lowell, Joe asked if I was still interested in racing. I had just started my offseason and was a bit tired of racing in wet and muddy conditions, but not wanting to completely bail, I told him I was weather depended. If it was going to be nice, I’d show up, if it w
