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Rick Gilliland's 47th birthday was one to remember.

Paralyzed from the chest down, Gilliland took his handcycling skills to the Rocky Mountain Cycling Omnium, a three-day competition in Denver from June 6 to 8. He isn't shy about expressing his delight over the results, which included a 14th-place finish in the criterium circular course, where racers try to complete as many laps as they can in one hour.

"I kicked another guy's butt who's been fairly beating me all summer, so it was nice," said Gilliland, whose birthday fell on Day 1 of the competition. "I beat him two out of the three days.

"I'm pretty sure he's going to make the Indiana race, so our contest continues."

The Indiana Stage Race in Indianapolis on Aug. 23 to 24 is the final race on the United States Handcycling Federation series, for which riders, placed within different divisions based on their impairment and age, earn cumulative points determined by their finishes.

Gilliland, a Nikiski resident stricken with transverse myelitis, a swelling of the spinal cord, is currently third in his division having already competed in the Redlands Bicycle Classic in California from April 3 to 6, the Clocktower Classic in Rome, Ga. on April 24 to 25 and then the Athens Twilight in Athens, Ga., later that night.

"Our handcycles are three wheels, and I never took so many turns on two wheels as I did in that one," he said of the Athens race. "It was fun. It was exciting."

Every time he traverses a course, Gilliland learns more about himself, as well his mode of transportation.

"I'm finding out that once you hit 16 miles an hour, 60 percent of your energy is exerted to fighting the wind," he said. "Right now I'm making some adjustments so I can become more aerodynamic. But when you become more aerodynamic and lay back in your seat, you have less power when it comes to the hills.

"You have to adjust your cycle for that day's ride."

And with each bit of knowledge, he inches closer toward achieving his goal.

Facilitated by Challenge Alaska, a nonprofit organization that assists people with different impairments, Gilliland finished fifth out of nine divisional competitors in last summer's 23rd Sadler's Ultra Challenge, an eight-stage, 267-mile journey from Fairbanks to Anchorage, which just so happened to be the first race of his young career.

And although the Challenge is on hiatus this season as organizers revamp the course, making it safer for the 25th anniversary running next summer, that doesn't mean Gilliland is taking a break, too.

In fact, everything he's doing is geared toward that one week.

"That is the one, right now, I'm using all this summer to learn and to pick all the veteran's brains and try to do some adjustments on my cycle," he said. "Everything I'm riding and training for right now is to be the best I can be for next summer's Sadler's Challenge."

But nothing he's participated in yet compares to that grueling race.

"That doesn't even come close to the Sadler's Ultra Challenge," he said of the Omnium, adding the most he's ridden on a given day in any other race is 26 miles. "There is no other race on the circuit that challenges like the Ultra Challenge.

"When you go 50 miles day after day after day in the mountain ranges we have here in Alaska."

He's not bashful when it comes to stating his goal, either.

"The lowest spot I want to be is the fastest Alaskan, that's called the Sourdough Award," he said, adding Eagle River's Mark Hufford claimed it the past three years he's run the race. "Next year I'm going to try my best to show him I can beat him."

Gilliland was honored when he was invited to participate in a week-long Olympic training seminar in Colorado Springs in September.

And even though the next Paralympic Games after Beijing will occur when he is 51, Gilliland, who lived in Soldotna from 1981 to 2006, isn't ruling out the possibility of competing.

"I won't say there's no way I can make it, but I'm going to have to get out there and work at it if I want to have a chance," he said. "I'd love to be competing right there in the class to where I could compete with our Olympic team. But they're a pretty elite bunch."

Then again, he never thought he'd be losing weight at this point in his life, either.

"This handcycling changed my world as far as my physical fitness and my physical size, drastically," said Gilliland, who now weighs 180 pounds. "I never dreamed I'd need to be buying such smaller clothes to get around in. As you get older, you usually buy a little bit bigger."

Trying to garner support from other local handcyclists, Gilliland, and hopefully others, will be attending public events, such as the July 4 parade in Anchorage, Fairbanks' Goldpanners Days and Soldotna's Progress Days, in an attempt at boosting public awareness of handcycling for people who may be interested yet aren't certain of where to turn.

"Hopefully open some doors for the local people in the area that might feel like I used to, that this impairment's kind of made life really grim, but they do have different opportunities. (Challenge Alaska) takes people with different impairments kayaking and to play soccer and wheelchair basketball, skiing in the wintertime," Gilliland explained. "For the 10 years before I got my handcycle, I was twiddling my thumbs in a recliner and eating too much ice cream, and that was a bad combination.

"Hopefully somebody can read about how much fun I'm having and realize there are some doors out there," he added. "Sometimes you just have to knock harder on some of them to get them to open."

In the meantime, Gilliland continues knocking them down.

Matthew Carroll can be reached at matthew.carroll@peninsulaclarion.com.