Most of us would love to set or break a sports record. Be it Barry Bonds' 762 major league career homers, the late Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point NBA game or Brett Favre's un-retirements, a record isn't just made to be broken, it can sometimes break down barriers between generations.
Then there's the cycling record local attorney Jamey Hurst set this past weekend during a mountain bike race in Colorado.
"I set the new course record for the most miles ever ridden in the Leadville Trail 100 without a seat," said Hurst on Wednesday. "Twenty miles."
That's not 20 miles total, standing up the whole time, draining as that sounds. Those 20 miles came early. Hurst actually rode 79 miles after those 20 he peddled before he was sorta/kinda/somewhat able to re-attach his seat.
"The bolt holding my seat to the seat-post broke," explained the 41-year-old Hurst. "The seat popped off between my legs. I pulled off of the trail and tried every McGyver trick conceivable to hold the seat on. I unscrewed every non-essential bolt. I tried twisty ties; tying it on with my arm warmers; and wedging it on the seat post. Nothing worked. By the time I realized my efforts were futile, the entire field was completely out of sight."
Yet he somehow peddled on, riding literally by the seat of his pants, which might be one reason close friend Brad Cobb - who finished the race more than two hours before Hurst - said afterward, "He's such a hardhead, he wouldn't quit."
It had been a humbling weekend for Cobb and Hurst long before he lost his seat, thanks to a previously secret accident that became public last Friday.
Two years ago - while riding in the Cohutta (Ga.) 100 ultra mountain bike race - the two met Floyd Landis, the disgraced Tour de Fraud winner who was then attempting to say his positive drug tests at the Tour de France were a mistake.
Having befriended Landis at the Cohutta event, Cobb and Hurst offered to bring his bike to him for the next race in Ohio, since they were also racing there. Landis thanked them and told them he'd see both them and the bike in a few days.
But on the drive from Chattanooga to Ohio - despite tightly securing the Landis ride to a specialized rack attached to a trailer - the rack broke somewhere north of Lexington, Ky., on Interstate 75 and the bike disappeared.
"We thought we knew pretty much where it had come off," said Hurst, "and we searched like crazy for it for two or three hours, but we never found it."
A few weeks ago someone working on a Kentucky highway clean-up crew found the bike and sold it to Greg Estes of Owenton, Ky., for $5. When he began researching it and found out it had once belonged to Landis, it became a national story, complete with Landis revealing the names of Cobb and Hurst to a couple of New York City journalists.
"Contrary to what some people said - not the New York Daily News writers, but others - Landis was great about the whole thing," said Cobb. "He could have cared less. We called him as soon as it happened. When we got to Ohio, he bought us a beer and we went out to dinner."
Still, by the time the Leadville race started on Saturday, Hurst, Cobb and fellow Chattanooga rider Stephen Lebovitz were ready to put the Landis story behind them.
At least until Hurst's seat broke.
"The Leadville's an out and back course," said Cobb. "So on my way back, going 25 miles an hour, I pass Jamey, who's going about two miles an hour up a mountain. I was like, 'What happened to him?'"
At that point, what hadn't happened? His seat had broken before the 103-mile course was five miles done, he had raced the 20 miles without a seat, thinking all matter of thoughts, most of them bad.
There were obvious anatomical considerations - "Fortunately, my wife and I have quit having children," laughed the father of Eliza (10), Colmore (8) and Adelaide (6) - but how long could he continue without a seat?
"I had a choice, ride back to the start or see how far I could make it with no seat," said Hurst. "I chose option B. My plan was to make it to the first crew-supported aid station at about mile 30 and quit."
But then he started passing racers, many of whom incredulously shouted, "Dude, where's your (expletive) seat?"
Said Hurst, "I must have heard 'Dude' 1,000 times."
But he also heard a couple named Justin and Becka ask if they could help. They promised to take his seat down the mountains, get it fixed and meet him at the aid station, which they did.
But that was just the beginning. Already three hours and 15 minutes into the race, Hurst had to reach the bottom of the Columbine Climb in 45 minutes or be pulled from the course, since anyone who's taken four hours to go that far is deemed unfit to finish the race.
"To be honest, I welcomed the prospect of being timed out," Hurst e-mailed friends earlier this week, including the Bubbas, a local cycling group he rides with on weekends. "If I missed the cut off, I could avoid the torture of an 8-plus mile climb into thin air. Even if I made the cut off, how could I make the climb? I was spent."
Somehow he made the cutoff, his computer showing a time of 3:59. But then he fell off his bike, which caused "an embarrassing temper tantrum in which I tossed my bike into the brush."
Yet for some reason he got back on and kept riding. And riding. And riding, eventually passing more than 1,000 bikers to finish in a respectable 10:46, good for 532nd place, though well behind Cobb and Lebovitz.
And greeting him at the finish was everyone from Brad and Stephen, to the Good Samaritans Justin and Becka, to his wife Louisa - whom he'd cursed at the 30-mile aid station for asking if he was OK.
"I told her I loved her and gave her a kiss," he said of reaching her at the finish line.
Cobb gave him the dreaded "Frog," an ugly little ceramic figure for whichever finishes last among the trio.
Then it was back to the hotel, where someone asked him, "Hey, did you hear about that crazy fella who rode that race without a seat?'
Replied Hurst, "No, I missed that."