Visualize

I am not much of a drinking man (at least since I left the Navy), but I think I had a blackout a couple of weeks ago. When I woke up the next morning I discovered that I had signed up for a one hundred mile bike ride in Kansas.

I am not much of a bike rider either.

But right there on the official list of riders on the Dirty Kanza 200 ride in Emporia, Kansas, there I was. The ride runs through the historic Tall Grass Prairie preserve, one of the last remnants of what most of America once looked like. And apparently I paid for the privilege, so there is no turning back. I’m going to ride a bike for a hundred miles in the middle of a prairie, located one hundred and sixty miles from the geographic middle of the United States, and a million miles from nowhere.

In one day.

Actually, it is not a hundred miles. It is APPROXIMATELY a hundred miles. The halfway point is at 68 miles, so “APPROXIMATELY” in Kansas talk means plus or minus 36 miles.

I’m guessing that it is not helpful that I just had knee surgery, and that I cannot yet bend my knee far enough to push a pedal around one revolution. But those are details.

Two of my brothers are in the ride too, so if they can do it, so can I. You just have to mentally picture yourself crossing the finish line and it will happen. It is called visualization.

This is what I visualize.