“I was one of those neighborhood kids who rode all over the place,” he recalled. “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, he and his friends would go to nearby Ray’s Indoor Mountain Bike Park, the world’s largest.
By age 14, Thorsky turned to BMX. Instead of racing, he turned to freestyle (doing tricks), including front flips, back flips and tail whips. He said BMX was a competitive thing among his friends. They continued to push themselves past their limits.
After high school, Thorsky joined the Air Force. He thought that was the end of his riding career until one day — while cycling at MetroParks Mountain Biking Area, just outside Wright-Patterson Air Force Base — he came across a flyer for an event in Dayton called the Fast Lap series, a string of monthly races over the summer.
He signed up for a 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,” he said.
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-20s while the others were in their 40s and 50s.
He had the idea they would be no competition for him. The group showed him otherwise.
“One hundred percent of them were faster than me,” he said. “I am 25 years old. I can run (at the time) an 8-minute, 40-second mile and a 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’d 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,” Thorsky said. “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 is again signed up for the annual Mohican Mountain Bike 100, a strenuous race set for May 21 in Loudonville.
“It’s the most coveted race that I want to do,” he says. “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.
“There are national pros, people who 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.”
Last year, Thorsky completed the race’s 100-kilometer (about 62 miles) version in 6 hours, 47 minutes. He placed 15th out of 118 in the Pro/Expert class.
With temperatures in the 90s, it was the first time he ever experienced heat exhaustion — and the cramping was “fierce,” he recalls.
“It was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life,” he added. “There were so many mental battles in that race.
“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 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 4 more miles to go.”
Following a short jaunt on a gravel road, Thorsky 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,” he said. “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 remaining track 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,” he said. “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, Thorsky has cut down on long-distance road biking from his training regiment, adjusted and added more time on actual mountain biking trails.
In the heat of a race, when he feels like quitting and doesn’t want to be on the bike anymore, Thorsky says he thinks about something that makes him want to keep going.
“One thing I have learned is if you just push through that dark point, 15 minutes later, you feel fine again,” he said. “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.”
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