Twenty-some years of May 27ths and a pattern emerges, not a tidy one, but a real one. There is always somewhere to be, something to train for, and some stretch of road or trail pulling at the edges of a well-laid plan.
It started simply enough. Back from New York in 2002, sitting down to map out the next week's training, already restless. By 2004, the restlessness had found a home. Settling into Missoula meant watching clouds pile over Lolo Peak from the highest street in town and running 12 miles through canyons for the first time, wondering how this place had taken so long to find.
Then came the races, the results, the reckoning. First place in 2006 with exactly one person in the age group did not feel like winning. Pocatello in 2007 was a different story, singletrack through sagebrush and aspen groves, knees aching, finishing first and meaning it. Trail politics in 2008 were looking up, and that same year brought a quiet grief, a reminder that the journey outlasts the achievements every time.
Crunch time in 2010 meant pastry test runs and a bike that needed to be race-ready by morning. 2015 was a Wednesday night ride in the rain because life kept getting in the way and the only answer was to go anyway. 2016 offered wind and steam instead of beauty, a reminder that knowing a place well sometimes means knowing when it is not showing its best.
By 2020, the public lands were overrun and underloved, everyone outside at once, the bathrooms abandoned. 2022 brought the Acton Bike Park, and 2023 left a bear's fate genuinely uncertain, which feels about right for a date that never fully resolves.
May 27th is not a landmark day. It is just a day that keeps showing up, asking whether you packed enough, trained enough, showed up enough. The answer is usually complicated, and that is what makes it worth writing down.