24 Hours at the Old Pueblo

I managed to completely throttle myself, but the bike race only has a little to do with that. I did more than 32 hours of total drive time to race in a 24 hour race in Southern Arizona to be battered by crazy weather!

 My journey began with a lot of night driving, like 10 hours in the dark. I pulled off the highway at some point and snoozed for about an hour or more, then headed out again.

Finally I made it to Arizona and came down HWY 77 through a canyon. The video does not do it justice. One of these days I'll have to look on a map to see what canyon it was, but it was a beautiful sight!

Finally, about 15 hours of driving I made it to the venue at Willow Springs just outside of Oracle Arizona.

I got settled in real quick in our campsite that Jonathan Davis of the Boulder Trek Store saved for us. It was a primo spot, right off the race course and only about 100 yards from the timing tent! I was there before the rest of the guys from Epic Endurance Cycling so I had a good amount of time to hang out on my own and preride the course once. 

As the weather would have it things started to get sketchy on Friday. By 1/4 of the way into the race we had 30 MPH sustained winds with 60 MPH gusts!

So the drive was crazy long, and the weather was crazy too. This lead up to quite a 24 hour race. My prerides took place on Thursday and Friday. The course was dry and a little loose in spots. There was a lot of tight single track lined with all sorts of cactus and rattle snakes. Most of the course was very smooth singletrack that wound sharply, with occasional pump track like sections, followed by a very few bumpy rocky sections. I think I only noticed the rocks because I was riding a full rigid bike.

Early on the 16 mile course there is a section called the "Bitches", yes deragatory for a reason! This section had four hard maximum 15 to 20 second effort climbs followed by equally steep descents with huge water bars that could launch you four feet into the air. I heard that someone broke their back on this section last year. During the race this whole section changed due to a head wind. It was impossible to keep momentum going to help on the uphill parts, not to mention it was early on the course and I found I was not really warmed up and ready for the extra maximum efforts needed to get through this section. However, I found I was always passing people here.

I can't remember the names of all the other sections but one sticks out. It was called the Corral or something like that. This was a very fast twisting descending single track section. On my lap one I came very close to having a cactus eat me, so close the guy I had just passed was whooping and hollarin' about how kick-ass fast I was going! At times my Niner Air 9 Carbon with the rigid fork felt like it was a part of me and I was slinging the bike back and forth like it was an extension of my hips.

My first night lap came around and I headed to the transition tent in driving wind and rain. I did not have a positive attitude for this lap, but that changed when I headed out. After the handoff I headed to the bike and found the rain had stopped and the wind had slowed. Straight away the race course seemed well packed and fast, I took off! I was passing someone almost every minute, my lights blazing a trail through the needles and spines of the desert. I was feeling good, passed a couple guys on a tight section, then.... oh SHIT!!!! This isn't the trail! I straight lined a turn and plowed over some boulders and through cactus. I stayed upright and got back on the trail to find I had punctured both tires. The air was running out fast! I found the holes and rotated them to point downward so that Stan's NoTubes could work some magic. It seemed like forever, but two or three minutes later the leaks stopped and I was able to pump air back in. I jumped back at it once the tires had some air, although I was taking much more care. Before I knew it my lap was done. I think it could have been my fastest lap had I not gone off the trail, bummer...

My second to last lap was also in the dark, and I started out feeling really cold. I had some trouble getting a good effort out on this one, it was not my best lap.

Finally, my final lap came about and it was daylight! The course was damp and fast and I wanted to make a good final time. I was flying! Passing people left and right and surfing the turns. At four miles out I was making my best time, I was at 49 minutes starting the final climb. About two miles later it all came apart! I had nothing in the legs... not a drop. The last two miles took me 20 minutes. I failed to eat much during the night and I think that cost me... fail!

As the clock ran out on our four man team I was sort of lucky in that I only ended up doing four laps while everyone else had to do five. I had good and bad feelings about this. On one had I thought I could do sub 1:10 laps, at least one. Of my four laps I never felt I had it together to do this, yet aside from bonking on my 4th lap I was never really that tired after any of my laps. I think the aggressive fire I once had as dwindled a bit, I need to find that again. If only someone would try to run me off the road just before a race I could have the adrenaline driven rage going, this is probably not a good idea.

The clock ran out... and we placed 10th out of 142 four man teams. Pretty freakin' good! The primary team placed 2nd.

Check out the race coverage photos: Click photo for more

Click Photo for more

After a mad scramble to clean up camp, pack, put a wet muddy tent into the back of the Treg and then manuvere out of the campground the last phase of my marathon of no sleep started. I'm tired of typing now so I'll just use pictures!