Friday, July 24, 2009

24 Hours = 1440 Min = 86,400 Seconds

Timothy Paul Finkel is going to ride his bicycle for 24 hours tomorrow in the 24 Hour World Championship.  You can tune in at www.24wcs.com to follow him.  He is going up against some of the best mountain bike racers in the world.  If I know Tim he won't stop turning the cranks on his bike for more than a matter of minutes in that 24 hour time frame, and that will be to stop for food and water.  The Question shouldn't be "Why is he doing it?"  Which I'm sure most of you just asked yourself in your head.  The question is "How is he doing it?"  Muscle's can be trained to work for that long, but human will has to tell the brain to keep doing it.  So at 4a.m. after being in the saddle for 16 hours straight with 8 more hours to go it's pitch black out, maybe a little rain has fallen, you've ridden 180 miles already, you've eaten 8 Pop Tarts, your arms and back hurt, your legs are tired, and you smell awful, every instinct you've ever had in your whole life is telling you to stop this then all you have to do is try a little less, just quit a little bit, then it will be easier to quit a little more, then a little more until your out of it and it becomes easy.

It's something pretty special.  Tim rides his bike all the time, so really to me the bike part comes second to the human will.  The Heart.  That special something that it takes to get something like this done.  I have no idea if Vegas runs odd on this race or not, but I would love to be able to put money down on Tim for the race.  I would bet on him to win (but I would also hedge my bet by betting that he would show, I mean that's only smart gambling, if he wins, it's just stacking up the money at that point.)

Good luck Tim, keep the rubber side down, and win the damn thing.

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