Hi, I'm Willow Belden, and you're listening to Out There.

This is a podcast about the outdoors, from your window box and garden to the fields on the edge of town, to the forests, prairies, seashores, and wilderness.

On the show, we explore our relationship with nature, through stories, interviews, essays, and even some fiction.

We travel around the U.S. and the world with tales of love and heartbreak,

passion and adversity, desperation, and trying. Every summer, there's a crazy long mountain bike race near my home in Wyoming.

It's 70 miles on trails and dirt roads with almost 9,000 feet of elevation gain, which,

on a scale of one to epic, is pretty epic.

The race is called the Enduro, and this year, I made the mistake of signing up.

On today's episode, I'll share the story of what happened.

It's a story about trying to prove yourself, about pushing limits, about testing what you're

capable of.

And ultimately, it's about how forcing yourself to succeed can end up being its own kind

of failure. The first time I heard about the Enduro, I was out for a drink with some friends,

and there was this guy at our table who kept talking about a bike race,

a really long, really hard mountain bike race.

This guy described the race as a suffer fest.

That's actually the term he used, sufferfest.

But in the same breath, he also said it was super fun and that I should try it someday.

Now, I love cycling, but a sufferfest did not sound fun.

And yet, the place I live, Laramie, Wyoming, is aggressively outdoorsy. I'm surrounded by people who do

epic things, whether it's skiing or biking or climbing or running. Herculian challenges

are the norm around here. If you're a mountain biker in Laramie, you have to do the

...