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96 Days -- A 6,270-mile mountain biking trek

PETE GLADDEN
Pete’s World

Published: June 12, 2017

I’m not even going to try to hide it. So right from the get-go I’ll plead guilty to the fact that this week’s column falls squarely into the shameless promotions department. Yup, I’m openly propagandizing my third publication, 96 Days, a 500-page eBook that chronicles the 6,270-mile mountain biking trek I did across Canada back in 2009. But rather than drone on about the book itself, I’m going to discuss it from the “How I got to that point?” slant.

You see, some 17 years ago my athletic interests suddenly did a major U-turn away from the cyclist/runner/triathlete world I was living in for the previous 25 years. During my 20’s I was a bicycle racing and training adrenaline junkie who craved speed and competition. I loved pushing the envelope on those two thin tires, and I savored each and every day I got the opportunity to either test myself against others or against myself. I craved that on-the-edge feeling I’d taught myself to endure when biking at and above LAT (lactate threshold).

In my 30's and 40's I grew to love those same sensations of suffering while running, swimming and multi-sport racing. Back then all that training and racing helped to make my life very fulfilling. Then in 1999, on a complete whim, I decided to do a self-supported mountain biking trek around the island of Iceland...and BANG a long dormant switch was tripped on in my brain. Only took another year for the activation of that switch to fully initiate the end of my racing career.

Circumnavigating Iceland on a mountain bike taught me there's just as much thrill in adventure as there is in racing. It also prompted me to begin thinking about all the other amazing adventures just waiting to be discovered. So began my infatuation with adventure, and so too began my love of mountain biking.

I grew to relish the solitude of biking on woodland double and single-track, of cruising along secluded backcountry gravel roads, and of meandering across mountain meadows for mile after endless mile. It was both mystical, spiritual and therapeutic, and it gave me a real sense of peace and tranquility. It was like “church on a bike,” where I could completely loose myself in the moment, where I could get away from it all yet still be connected to a bicycle. To me that rather unique combination equated to a cycling Utopia!

From year 2000 onward, I ended up mountain biking, backpacking, rock climbing and mountaineering all over the world, going anywhere and doing anything that provided me with the opportunity to explore this big beautiful planet. Well, eventually all of that led me to the ’09 TransCanada Backroads ride, a trek conceived a year earlier by a friend and me while enjoying a few lagers in a small Hudson pub.

A trip of that magnitude had been something I’d always wanted to do, but could never justify the time and logistics. But with the evolution of a different mindset, I began to see such a venture as plausible. An endeavor like that was a rare opportunity to experience first hand the mental and physical rigors of pushing oneself day after day after day in quest of an end-of-the-rainbow kind of goal. To be sure, TransCanada’s allure was its daunting length and breadth, a full quarter year’s worth of commitment.

It also presented my partner and me with yet another major challenge, namely taking our professional careers and businesses on the road for 90-plus days. That more than the mental/physical unknowns was a much more dangerous case of risk v. reward. Nevertheless we still took the leap.

In the end, our Canadian trek turned out to be a life-changing event. It taught me lessons about taking risks, about chasing dreams, and about pushing myself when I just didn’t think I had anything left in the tank. It was so inviting, so invigorating, so intoxicating that I subsequently did four more Trans North American mountain biking trips. TransCanada was my introduction to a very special kind of freedom.

Okay, with that being said, here comes the shameless promotion…my book, 96 Days, is available at the iTunes Store. To download your copy go to:  https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/96-days/id1234344476?mt=11  


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