I spent my summer trying to prepare for the race and to condition my self for the race. I played Ultimate as my main method of upping my cardio. I also rode to work quite a bit, and went mountain biking as much as I could. I didn’t think it was enough. Before the race I was pretty nervous as to whether I would be able to complete all my laps.

The day before the race I was pretty nervous. We pre-rode the course, and I was pretty surprised by it. It was mostly made of double track, with a bit of singletrack in there. A couple sections were pretty technical, but overall it was not a technical race. It really was about the endurance. Right before the finish line there was a horrible climb. Killer climb. Long, sustained, granny ring kinda climb. During the pre-ride I chose to walk most of it.

The night before the race I was so nervous I had trouble sleeping. Very strange really. I was tired, and wanted to sleep, but couldn’t. It didn’t help that our room was pretty warm. I discovered the day of the race that our condo had a washer/dryer combo unit. I thought that was pretty cool.

Getting ready for the race I could see it was raining. Eww. It ended up raining for most of the race. Over the 24 hours of the race, the course turned into a oozing soupy mess of a trail. The singletrack was extremley slow by my last lap, but it was still pretty fun. I would have preferred less rain, and more sun, but I can’t control the weather. The washer and dryer were definitely a saviour. It was operating almost the entire 24 hours of the race.

In between laps I came back to the condo to get clean, warm, and have something to eat (and wash my gear). One thing I really wanted to do for this event was to blog it as it happened. It was something I really wanted to experience and let others experience. I was very happy to see all the unsecured networks that I was able to use. Writing about the race as it unfolded was something very special, and I think I will always remember being awake at 3 am after my lap, not being able to sleep until I type out the results of the 3rd lap.

I will remember that as a good experience, but I will also remember the bad. The race organization was pretty poor. They didn’t have very many volunteers. Actually, there were only about 3 course marshals over the entire course. After the first couple laps, this dropped to 2. At the start/finish line there was only 1 vendor selling stuff. I was really expecting a huge festival atmosphere, with loud music, movies on a big screen, people watching the race all night long. I am sure the weather played a part in it, but everything felt very subdued. The organization really stood out though. There was no information posted for the racers to read about what to expect for each lap. Officials just sort of assumed people knew what to do. Inside the lap tent was a scene of chaos. People standing everywhere, lots of noise, racers coming and going. The lap counters were very inconsistent when it came to letting racers know when they could tag off their next rider. Most wanted to see the baton, others didn’t care. Most of the time they let you know when your lap was counted.

But they did make mistakes. Kevin cought one. They missed his lap. After the fact I found out that they missed the completion of my last lap. Pisses me off. I remember coming in to the tent, tapping the table with the baton, or some other really visible form of showing the baton. The lap counter waved me on, so I passed it off to Mike, and he took off. Somehow they didn’t record the end of my last lap, and the team is now short one lap.

With the lap missing, we only had 17 laps, and ended up 11th out of 13.

Our laps:

With the correction:

My laps:

I am extremely pleased with my lap times. I supposed that my first lap also contains the time taken for the run. Each lap I felt strong and healthy. My legs always felt ready to pump away up the hills. I hydrated well, and never felt like I was lacking during the ride. I could have pushed a little harder I guess, but then I most likely would have blown up before my last lap.

I controlled my output by using a heart rate monitor. Unfortunately for me it kind of went haywire. I think it got a little too wet or something, but it was non functional for most of my laps. Besides that, I dropped my chain a couple times. That was a little frustrating since each time it happened I was downshifting for a big hill. Here I was chainless at the bottom of a hill. But that was it for my mechanicals. No flat tires, no borken chains, no crashes. I had planned to walk the technical bits of the course, but each lap I actually rode those bits. Very fun to pass someone who is walking, have them watch you scoot by down a rock face, then hear them call out “Nice ride”.

One thing I took from this is that someday I think I want to try doing that race solo. I had such a great time, and enjoyed myself so much (despite the weather), that I envision myself doing the race by myself. Realistically I know this is going to take a lot of hard work to prepare for this endevour, and I don’t plan on doing this for a few years, but some day I want to try it. It was really hard to get out of bed and ride at 6 am, in fact it was quite painful physically, but after my last lap was done, I was a bit sad. It was over, and I wasn’t ready for it to be over. I never felt like I pushed myself to my limits. I raced hard on my laps, I was tired when I was done, and I was sore for a couple days after, but I feel like only 4 laps was too easy. Someday. Someday I will do more. Maybe next year we will field a 3 man team. That would be a good start for the solo preparation.