Nigh on thirty years ago as a group of friends and I were planning a sea kayaking trip my friend Terri asked me “Mike why does everything you do have to be so hard?” I didn’t really have a “because it’s there” type answer at the time, but this one question has been rolling around […]
Author: MikeMcGuffin
Stressing Over the Numbers
Back in the day I taught class on expedition mountaineering. I emphasized that extended trips into remote mountain ranges are as much (if not more so) mental as they are physical and technical. I stressed the need to find “some kind of peace.” If you’re continually fighting your gear, the weather, the mountain, your partners […]
93 Miles 1 Gear
UnBound XL T Minus 166 Days Whether it’s doing the Festive 500 in under 40 hours or riding 160 miles to visit every Taco Time in Western Washington, I think it’s important to keep cycling interesting by dreaming up and doing challenging stuff. It was in this spirit – doing pointless challenging stuff – that […]
Unbound XL T-170 Days
Be careful what you wish for seems to be a common refrain in my adult life. A month or so ago I put my name into the lottery for the Unbound XL, a 350-mile gravel bike race that loops through the remote Flint Hills of central Kansas. Well I got in. The first question I […]
Lyngen Alps Norway – Sjufellet (1086m)
3/31/24 Well it had taken me three days of constant travel but I’d made it – the Lyngen Alps of Northern Norway. It was Easter Sunday and I was 69 degrees north of the equator – nearly 500 km above the arctic circle – and Heikki, Mika, Kari, Aaro and I were about to go […]
The Rift Race
I realized recently that I’d forgotten to post a recap of my trip to Iceland to participate in the Rift Gravel Race. First of all a bit of gratitude; I’m grateful to have the fitness, the finances and the time required to pull off a 200K bike race across the lava fields of Iceland. So […]
Stagecoach 400
This story begins with a noisy bike chain. I was doing some winter riding down and around Palm Springs when my chain started a creaking. A stop in at the local bike shop resulted, as it often does, in a discussion with the local cycling guru who mentioned the Stagecoach 400. A minimal amount of […]
Unbound 2023
Oh goodness where to begin the story of Unbound. I’ve been trying to gain entry into Unbound before it was Unbound: back in the Dirty Kanza days. Well 2023 was my lucky year, and way back in January I was notified that I had indeed been given entry into the event. Be careful what you […]
Keep on Keeping On – SIR 400K
Currently I’m like the dog who caught the car. I signed up for Mid South, Unbound, Rift and SBT GRVL, and guess what: I got into ‘em all. That’s six hundred miles of gravel racing. The Mid South is already water under the bridge, and suffice it to say I didn’t finish as well as […]