Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Just getting started...

So, you decided to waste time at this site? Alright.

You can catch my going on's here. Stuff with my riding, stuff with my life, and just stuff. Think of it as a good way to kill time until you have something important to do.

Here is a summary and picture I did of a race earlier this year. I enjoy many types of racing, but mainly MTB, road and crit. I'll be posting recaps of races for awhile, with pictures as I can get them.

**************************************************************
With the ultimate intention of racing the 24 hours of 9 mile forest (www.24-9.com) I set out to compete in my first 12 hour mountian bike race for practice. Becky (my woman) and I got to the race 30 minutes to the start. Just enough time to get my bike ready, change, register, and get a sweet 2 minute warm up in. I knew from prvious year's results I would probably do many laps on the 4.5 mile course, so preriding could be done on the first lap. We all piled our bikes 50 yards away and prepared to make the mad dash to retrieve them and start our first lap. It seemed that no one was going too hard at the word go as I easily got to my bike and headed off in the first spot. I was riding fairly conservatively that first lap, and within 5 minutes I had 2 riders charge by me. One was Lee who I had pegged as a favorite, the other a rider on a 2 person team. Well, the duo rider and I rode that first lap together while I saw Lee charging like he was determined to set a big gap. Lap after lap I went, setting lap times in the low 20's. I figured I would see Lee again, and sure enough he could be seen 3 hours into it. I rode with him for most of a lap, where he informed me that we had lapped the entire solo field already. Cool! I passed Lee there and just spent the rest of the time trying to be consistant, take in nutritional needs, and counting off the hours. I developed a fan club in the start area because at that time I was not only beating the solo division, but the duo and all but one of the 4 person teams. After 11 hours and 13 minutes (7:13pm) I called it a day. I had a 2 1/2 lap lead and that was good enough to win it. In that time span I stopped once for 30 seconds, and once for 3-4 minutes. My lovely wife handed bottle after bottle the rest of the time. We then drove back to the in-laws house, 1 hour away, but not before I hit up the Arby' drive thru and then later the Taco Bell Drive thru. Hell yeah, I deserved it. Oh, just to let you Velo punks know, with that win I qualified for the 24 hour world solo championship. Soon, we'll be putting out results on a global stage. The race and results can be found on www.wemseries.com

No comments: