Mission Project

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By McDevitt, Sean

Why I ride
As a member of our design team here at Mountain Hardwear, I took on the mission blog challenge, to get out there and use our gear and write about it. During this time my cycling habit became a "problem." So while my neighbors asked why I haven't mowed my lawn for 6 months, I began asked myself why I ride. I ride because it teaches me things about myself and the world around me. Doing endurance bike races tells you things about yourself, your life and your choices. In the middle of the night the VOLUME IS TURNED UP. When I was a runner, I used to hear that the run begins the moment when you forget that you are running. The same is true with riding your bike, when you crest a hill and zip along a winding path through a grove of trees. It's like the lines between you; your bike and the world become blurred, less defined. Some of my fondest moments have come on some wind-swept trail high on some hill far from home. So there again I found myself, late at night in some foreign town, at the local supermarket, buying firewood, water and a ridiculous amount of Kettle chips and Gatorade. This time it was the Coolest 24 Hour race against Cancer held in Cool California.

By Robin Avery

Summer is fast approaching and the days have began to grow longer, and to me, that means more time doing what I love; slackline. Recently I've started to highline. Highlining is similar to slackline except for one important detail: you're high above the ground! Highlining is much different from slackline in respect to the equipment challenge and the mental training it takes to fool your mind into stepping out above a gorge, or a sheer cliff, or a ravine...basically a long long fall.

Firstly, there's no messing around when it comes to high lining. All your equipment has to be solid! There are no taking chances when it comes to highlining. Everything needs redundancies. If something snaps or breaks, you have to have another way to equalize the tremendous amounts of tension required to keep the line taut.

Warm weather drove two friends and me to setup a highline one late afternoon. We drove up to Grizzly Peak Boulevard somewhere between Berkeley and Richmond, California. My friend Damian had this spot already staked out and knew it was perfect for my first highline. 84 feet across! We unloaded all of our gear from the back of our car and lugged it up to Wildcat Canyon...which we will be walking across.

The first step is admitting you have a problem...
Within days of returning home from racing 24 Hours in the Old Pueblo we started plotting our next race. We were all hooked, obsessed with racing again, doing better. Maybe we love riding are bikes, the personal challenge or the endorphins. Regardless, the next race would be at Bogg's Mountain Demonstration Forest which can be found a few hours north of San Francisco. Myself, Jonas and Pat will be a 3 man team since Gavin will be racing the Arizona 300. In my previous entry, I mentioned that Gavin was the biggest Junkie of all of us, known to ride Mt. Tamalpais all night; well he upped the ante by committing to do 300 mile unsupported mountain bike race across the mountains of southeast Arizona. Needless to say he will be occupied.

Sean McDevitt the morning after the race.

The Race Is With Yourself
This is about my experiences foray into endurance mountain bike racing. The first race I will be taking part in is called "24 Hours in the old Pueblo." The rules are simple, ride your bike around a 15 miles single/double track mountain bike trail through cactus invested desert hills as many time as you can; most laps wins. I am a 36 year old avid lifelong cyclist and member of our design team here at Mountain Hardwear. Some time during the past year my cycling habit became a full fledged addiction. What used to be a weekend thing became a daily thing, then twice a day on the weekends. Suddenly I found myself on long brutal rides with skinny people in team kit wearing heart rate monitors. So when a friend asked me to join a team racing at "24 hours in the Old Pueblo in Tucson Arizona." With so many hard northern California epic rides under my belt, I figured, how hard can it be?

See more photos of the race on Flickr