The Monday After Pill

Well we’re just shaking off the weekend. I was at the 24 hours of nine mile as you may or may not have known. We started racing on Saturday at 11:00 AM and continued through out the night and into the day. There’s a certain something to racing on a 4 person team for 24 hours. Mountain biking is certainly an individual sport but in something like this you know that your results could either hinder or aid in the progress of other racers. Our plan was no plan. Get out there and turn your fastest lap each time you’re out and maybe that’ll be enough to get in more laps than the other guys. Order of the day was slotted for Jonzee, Danny, myself, followed by Bubba. We even had a wrench on hand, Peter the mechanic and his buddy Mike.

I figured that for myself the 24 would be a good time to start racing mtn bikes. I had no races logged on as of yet for this year so I didn’t have alot of race pace in me. I used my first lap to try to blow the carbon out. It work pretty good. I had some mostly open trail for my 1st lap and it was sunny and not to hot. I could feel my right calf get a little heavier and heavier from the bee sting as the lap progressed but it didn’t seem like anything major. I should have kept wearing my “Magic Socks” that I had on most of the week. Lap 2 came up way too fast and it was just in time to go out in a full blown rain out. Yup………….rain. Sloshy enough to make the first 1/3 of the course a little greasy. I was looking for a better time on my 2nd lap and things were feeling really good. As it turned out we kept inching away from the other teams and my rain lap wasn’t that bad after all but I certainly didn’t catch my first lap time though.

The cycle continued and continued into the night………1,2,3,4, 1,2,3,4, and so on and so on.

At roughly 11 at night or 6 miles into the 14 mile loop I felt a really familiar feeling. My left foot was getting a little wobbly. Just when I had enough time to fear that I was blowing out a cleat……………’pop’. My left crack arm falls off and goes sailing into the night. Remember I do have some experience with this. Like at the Iceman last year in the last 1/16th mile of the course. CRAP!!!!!!!!!………………….I fumble around for a bit, find all the items that I need and set back out to re-catch all the time I lost. About 3 miles later, same results only this time I’m getting to the point that I just want the frickin thing to stay on there……………………….. for good. So with all the mad skills of a trailside twit I start getting the bolts on the crankarm secured really, really good until I strip one of the bolts out until it’s completely round which is exactly the shape that you don’t want a hexbolt to look like or to get, seeing on how they don’t sell tools for ‘special’ bolts like that. I finish the lap off promising the single track demons that I will put in zero efforts so long as I get to finish the lap without having to run. So be it. I limp in with a lousy time and a dud for a bike. The bolt is a complete bust and is now staying put i.e. stuck on the bike, but now the bike is unreliable for my next projected night lap of 3:49 AM.

The fellas mention that there is an Ellsworth demo tent on the grounds. Hmmmmmmm. I talk to my now homie Rick from Ellsworth and he sets me up with a fully XTR equipped Ellsworth Evolve. He says that I can use it through the morning if’n I’d like to. And I did. I squeaked off my last 2 laps of the race on this thing. 29 inch hoops, a ton of travel front and back, and sic sic handling. This ride had me thinking “what rock gardens” and trust me there were plenty. If you ever get a chance I’d highly recommend the experience. It made the laps look and feel totally different.

When the dust settled we punched out 20 laps in 24:04:12 minutes of racing. Covered 294 miles and climbed 11,700 feet of earth. All in all it was good enough to land us a 1st place in our division (35+) and a reported 8th overall for all teams. Real time showed that we held onto 9 of the 20 fastest laps in our class. Granny Gear gave us all lights for our efforts which was a nice score. And of course mad props to the homies that were tearing it up and throwing support. Man it was a blast. Now I know that normally a podium shot would be expected following a podium finish but all I have is a shot of us in the process of dismounting. But if you look hard enough it actually looks like Bubba is doing his best river dance impression.