A 445th Airlift Wing Reserve Citizen Airman’s passion for biking began as a hobby but has grown into more than that. Master Sgt. Zachary Thorsky, 445th Airlift Wing safety office flight safety NCO and wing staff unit fitness program manager, has been riding dirt bikes since he was a young child and now is a competitive mountain bike racer.
“I was one of those neighborhood kids who rode all over the place. I built ramps, wrecked all the time, and even had to go to the hospital. I eventually got into dirt bike racing but unfortunately, it was just too expensive for my parents to afford.”
Growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, he and his friends would go to nearby Rays Indoor Mountain Bike Park, the world’s largest mountain bike park.
By age 14, Thorsky turned to BMX (Bicycle Motocross). Instead of racing, he turned to freestyle (doing tricks) such as front flips, back flips, tail whips, etc. He said BMX was a competitive thing between him and his friends. They continued to push themselves past their limits.
After high school, Thorsky joined the Air Force. He thought this was the end of his riding career until one day while riding at the MetroParks Mountain Biking Area, just outside Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, he came across a flyer for an event in Dayton, Ohio called the Fast Lap series, a series of races once a month over the summer. He signed up for the race, thinking he would win. That was not the case; he ended up 15th out of 25 racers.
“I called my friends after the race to let them know that was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life.”
Thorsky had the bug. He started training for future races and linked up with a group of older mountain bikers. At the time, he was in his mid-twenties and was riding with this group of 40 and 50-year-olds. He had the idea that they would be no competition for him. The group showed him otherwise.
“One hundred percent of them were faster than me. I am 25 years old. I can run (at the time) an 8 minute 40 second mile and half. I should be good at this! I have the skills to do it, I grew up on bikes! I think most people would have quit at that point and would have decided, well this isn’t my sport. I kept doing it. I wasn’t going to quit. I was still having fun. I also got lucky that there is a good community for mountain biking around here.”
Thorsky started to get to know people in the group, including an ex-Navy Seal named Chris. When they would ride in the woods, Chris would constantly lap him. With hard work and consistency, he started training with Chris and now they are at a competitive level with each other.
“The Ohio mountain biking scene has blown up quite a bit in the last few years. There are three main super-fast mountain bikers in Dayton, and we are all good friends. We’re on the same team. We travel around the east coast doing ultra-marathon races,” Thorsky said.
Thorsky signed up for the annual Mohican Mountain Bike 100, a strenuous race being held in Loudonville, Ohio, May 21, 2022.
“As far as the races go, it’s the most coveted races that I want to do. It’s difficult because it’s hot, takes about eight hours to ride and has a high percent of single track, which means, the race is composed of almost 95 percent mountain biking with very little pavement,” Thorsky said. “There are national pros, people that do this as a full-time job that show up and do it in about six hours. I am lucky if I am in the sevens. The average person is doing it in 12 to 13 hours.
Thorsky completed the 100 kilometers (approximately 62 miles) version of the race last year in six hours and 47 minutes. He placed 15 out of 118 in the pro/expert class.
“It was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. There was so many mental battles in that race. Ninety something degrees in temperature.”
Thorsky said that was the first time he experienced heat exhaustion and cramping. He said the cramping was fierce.
“It felt like I had the flu for an hour and half. I thought it was, what we call in cycling, bonking, when you haven’t eaten enough calories and you’ve spent all your energy. So I hit an aide station and started drinking a whole jar of pickle juice. It’s disgusting but it’s full of sodium and I thought that’s what I needed. It’s supposed to help stop the cramping. Three hours into a seven-hour race, my legs were cramping so bad I was laying in the middle of a field screaming at the top of my lungs. It looked like a fist was under my skin.”
After a while, he figured out the true issue. He recovered and hit the track again. He thought to himself, “I had finished the single track part which was approximately 58 miles of the 100K race. I have four more miles to go to finish this race.” Reinvigorated by that, Thorsky hit the track again. After a short jaunt on a gravel road, he made a right turn. He then came across a hill.
“I’ve never seen a more steep hill in my life. It’s so big you can’t see the top. I didn’t have enough strength to pedal up the first hill. I was so exhausted at the top of the hill that apparently I was interviewed by a camera crew and don’t remember any of it. Now I’m a part of the Mohican 100 advertisement video.”
In the interview when he asked them how much longer the race was, the camera crew told him he had about 10 more miles to go. Thorsky replied, “What?”
He described the rest of the 10 miles as steep, steep climbs and then steep descents followed by more of the same.
“I finished the race but I was in another dimension of pain…. I signed up again for the race this year, this time doing the 100 mile race, so there is obviously something wrong with me.”
To prepare for his upcoming race, Thorsky has cut down on long distance road biking from his training regiment, adjusted and added more time on actual mountain biking trails.
“That last race took me six hours and 47 minutes to complete; this one is an extra 30 miles, which, if I’m being honest, keeps me up at night.”
Thorsky said when he feels he wants to quit, he thinks about something that makes him want to keep going.
“Sometimes when I get to mile three I want to quit. I don’t want to be on the bike anymore. I’m not having fun. I want to be done. One thing I have learned is if you just push through that dark point, 15 minutes later, you feel fine again. I just try to remember that pushing myself to this limit is why I am there. I tell myself, ‘you did it, you are there, be happy about that.’ You have to have a mindset like that if you want make your body and mind do the impossible.”
| Date Taken: | 03.18.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 03.18.2022 15:14 |
| Story ID: | 416758 |
| Location: | DAYTON, OHIO, US |
| Hometown: | CLEVELAND, OHIO, US |
| Hometown: | DAYTON, OHIO, US |
| Hometown: | WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, OHIO, US |
| Web Views: | 27 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Reservist’s Mountain Biking Passion Fuels Competitive Edge, by TSgt Joel McCullough, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
