Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 19, 1995 TAG: 9503210001
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-18 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: SU CLAUSON-WICKER CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
Look for his Schwinn on the steepest inclines within riding distance of his office at Virginia Tech's Brooks Forest Products Center. With his first 1995 competition a month away, he'll be sprint-pedaling up and down the mountain above Ellett Valley at lightning bursts approaching 40 mph.
That's the noon training.
At the end of the day, he loads up the panniers on his mountain bike and heads home the same way - riding nine miles down Harding Avenue along the North Fork of Roanoke River. Wright's training regimen involves making this trek at least three days a week, beginning two of those days with a long session of weightlifting.
Wright, 42, combines his passion for biking with marriage, two little girls, a house-building project and a full-time job as assistant director of technology development at the university's Brooks Forest Products Center. His 23-hour-a-week training regimen isn't easy; he often has the nagging feeling he should be elsewhere.
``When I'm with the family, I feel like I should be training. And when I'm training, I feel guilty that I'm not working on the house or helping [his wife] Barb with the family,'' he says. ``Sometimes, I'll turn my bike around in the road and come home.''
Despite this inner struggle, Wright has a strong record of winning races at distances most of us would consider grueling, even as walks. In 1993 and 1994, he won the championship in the Virginia Mountain Bike Racing Series sponsored by Mountain Dew, radio station K-92, the East Coasters bike shop and several bike manufacturers. Wright competes in a category for ranked riders over 35 years old. In 1992, when the series had not yet started, he won a gold medal in the Virginia Commonwealth Games, a competition in which mountain biking was one of many sports.
Wright says he began his athletic career as ``a fat little boy.'' When he was 12, a relative inadvertently criticized him at a family gathering for his 153-pound bulk.
``After that, I wanted to do something about my size,'' Wright says. ``So I told my parents. They said, `You'll never do it, but why don't you talk to a doctor.' The doctor discussed cutting back on eating and getting regular exercise. He said I'd never lose that weight, either.''
But Wright showed them. He jogged, then took up wrestling and weightlifting. In a year and a half, he'd grown a few inches taller and lost 20 pounds. He also began to like vigorous exercise and developed a competitive spirit.
During high school in Ann Arbor, Mich., Wright also took up motocross. He needed his strength to wrestle with the motorcycle and to handle the gravity force as he accelerated.
``A European sport study found European-style motocross [with its longer racing heats] to be the second most physically demanding sport. Soccer was first. That led to my interest in soccer,'' he says.
Wright played soccer at Central Michigan State, where he majored in art and philosophy. He continued to jog and lift weights, but motocross was his real love. Eventually, the racing bug got so strong that he dropped out of school to work in a motorcycle/snowmobile shop to support his habit. He developed a keen interest in modifying racing cycles, which led to his finishing school at the University of Michigan in mechanical engineering and taking a job with the Harley-Davidson motorcycle plant in Milwaukee.
``Yeah, there were a lot of tattoos,'' he says. ``Everybody rode motorcycles - everybody but me. At that time, I was riding a bicycle. I was getting concerned about the damage I did to areas I rode on, the fields and trails.''
At work, though, he had a Suzuki for test rides. In 1981, after two years, he left Harley to hike the Appalachian Trail. Two years later, working for the Square-D company, he again took off - this time to hike the Continental Divide from Mexico to Canada with a friend. When, weeks before the hike, the friend found he'd be in legal trouble if he used his financial aid money to finance the trip, Wright was disappointed only temporarily.
``I couldn't do the Continental Divide alone - that would be death - but I still had the world ahead of me,'' he says. ``So I got on my bicycle and rode down to Virginia to do volunteer work on the Appalachian Trail.''
Wright moved to Blacksburg at the end of summer, met his wife clogging, and, after a few quick career changes, began working as an engineer at the fuel alcohol still in Floyd. He did the hilly 20-mile round-trip commute on his bicycle. A few years later, when he took a similar job at the Brooks Forest Products Center, the Wrights found a house a similar distance from the office.
Around this time, Wright developed a hernia and a muscle problem that was aggravated by running long distances (12- to 15-mile runs had been the norm for him). He spent his recuperation reading mountain bike magazines; by the time he was on his feet again, he had a new competitive sport.
``We sold the family car to buy my first racing bike,'' he says. ``We have two vehicles, but I've put 40,000 miles on that bike. l use it for training, commuting and racing.''
Barbara makes it all possible, he says. ``If I didn't have her support, I couldn't be doing this. She spends a lot of time alone with the children.''
``I want him to be happy,'' she says. ``Bike racing usually makes him happy. But sometimes it doesn't. It's a drive he has.''
``Exercise is a sideline to what life's all about,'' Wright says. "It's nothing to die for.'' When his older brother had a heart attack in his 40s recently, Wright was prepared to give up strenuous workouts if necessary. He underwent medical tests with specialists in three states to determine that racing was safe for him.
``Exercising is mostly fun, but there have been times when working out was a hateful thing. I still did it,'' he says. ``And there were times when parts of my life were hateful, and exercise allowed me to get through them.''
by CNB