The Freshly-Moistened Chamois of Success.

Every year since I started my foray into bike racing I have competed at Pats Peak. The (new) course is awesome, the people are very friendly and the atmosphere is very laid back for such a rough event. This year, I would be going solo for 24 hours. Without any support. On a bike I had never ridden.

What could go wrong?

After a week long Transylvania adventure that didnt exactly go according to plan, I needed to race. And rest. Probably rest a bunch, actually. But hey, most of you already know my unimpeachable record for excellent choices.

I showed up at about 10am, and it was misting. I quickly registered, set up my 35 bottles, 10 sandwiches, 6 cups of rice slurry, bunch of bananas, various bars and gels and went to the rider meeting. At which we were informed of a "high probability" of the race getting called for lightning.

In my crafty race-brain, I had already begun cooking up a strategy:

Go with the 6 hour guys. Hang on as long as I could. Then go with the 12 hour guys. Bury myself in the first half of the race so regardless of when they called it, I would be ahead.

Infallible plan thusly formulated, I made all the final adjustments to my bike and kit. The latter of which consisted of a skinsuit and a rain shell.

Just a skinsuit and a rainshell. This would become important at about midnight.

When it was 45 degrees and pouring.

We huddled under the scoring tent until the last possible minute. Dylan McNicholas, Pete Smith and I talked about how Rowell applied embrocation like bronzing agent at a tanning salon. It was the only explanation of his outward indifference to the cold.

The horn went, and we stormed (read: unevenly trotted) across the field to our bikes. I did everything in my power not to get the holeshot, failed when Dylan slipped a pedal (NOT PRO!!) then succeeded in finding a wheel when I softpedaled to let some random guy off the front.

Things sorted themselves out by the first climb: Rowell (who had ants in his pants) took off in a fury, dropped me, Dylan and Pete and completely imploded the guy who initially got it in his head to go it alone.

I rode behind Dylan (and somewhat farther behind Rowell) for about a lap. Deciding I had done enough big-ringing the whole course, I "sat up" and let Dylan out of my sights. After all, there was still 23 hours and 25 minutes of racing for me.

I lapped the first guy in my field near the end of my second lap. Dylan was about a minute ahead, and I could just about close down the gap on the descent. Pete Smith was staying classy (as always) in the vicinity as well. Despite (or perhaps because of) my lack of support personnel, I made very good eating/drinking decisions: every lap, half sandwich in the bag, gu in the pocket, new bottle on the bike.

Another lap.

Uneventful. Went fast. Hurt a little.

Another lap.

Things were looking good. The course was hellish: every descent was sketchy, all the roots and rocks were greasy, and before every climb there was a football field of 4 inch deep mud that had you grunting as sweating like a fat kid at soccer practice.

Then after the first already rutted-out downhill after the first climb, tragedy struck.

Im running out of metaphors for the many and various ways my bikes fail dramatically during races. Im thinking of setting up a Madlib feature on this thing to let you guys do it for me. For example:


My _________ (expletive)_________ (noun) bent into my _________ (expletive) _________(adjective) __________ (noun) like __________ (name of military officer famous for an incredible failure) at __________ (name of place no one has ever heard of)


Of course, it would be helpful if Cannondale didnt make derailleur hangers out of tissue paper and unicorn farts.


Im 4, maybe 5 laps in. I am at least one lap up on second place. My X9 derailleur is on the wrong side of my chainstay. And Im halfway up a muddy ski hill. Dont panic, old man.

Turning murderous rage into mongoose-like agility I made it to the bottom of the hill without wrecking any more of my brand-new bike. I told the folks in the timing tent that my lap was cut because of a mechanical and ran to my tent. I had a hanger in my toolbox, and like an urchin bearing an empty soup-cup I begged the S&W Sports mechanic to install it.

The only catch to my now-functioning drivetrain was that only one gear out of 10 worked properly on the cassette. In complete disregard for the next 22 hours to go, I rode another all big-ring lap - this time, I had the pleasure of hanging with Dylan.

Dyaln is kind of like Indiana Jones. They are both pretty bad-ass. But while Indiana Jones is afraid of snakes, Dylan MCnicolas is afraid of wet, technical downhills. And while both complain loudly and often hilariously, they both seem to get though just fine.

Crisis Averted. More laps.

It was still raining. Hard. Trying to describe its constancy and ferocity would be like trying to explain the subtleties of landscape photography to a blind person (or bike racing to my mother). Eventually, I started to accept "pissing rain" as my environmental default - during the rare times it tapered off, it felt as though something was amiss.

And by now, it was getting dark: my will (and ability) to keep slogging through the ever-widening patches of sludge was sapped by every spin-out and knee slammed into the top tube. So I started playing the "lets see how far I can get before I jump off and run" game. Within a lap, this game was re-packaged and re-released as the "Fuck It: Its Lap 12, This Mud Sucks, Im Just Going To Walk" edition.

I am generally regarded as a decent rider in the dark. I can keep it upright and reasonably fast; night laps are when I put time into my competitors. This was doubly true at Pats. By nightfall, more than half the field had abandoned (by first light there would be only 2 of us on course!) and the remaining riders were slowing down.

I decided to see if I could turn sub-hour laps through the night.

As it turns out, I could.

My one hiccup was a drained light battery at the top of the last singletrack climb. This resulted in mild pants-shitting and somewhat less mild language all the way down the mountain. I emerged with a gillie-suit worth of vegetation clinging to me, my bike and my camelbak. I told the scoring guy I may or may not have cut the course, so if he wanted to can the lap it was his call.

That was two laps I may or may not have been docked.

One odd constant about 24 hour races is that the most undesirable things get stuck in a loop in your head. Car commercials, U2 songs, mnemonic devices, bad radio jingles - you name it, if it sucks, I was singing it to myself.

Combined with the incessant rain, it was like getting waterboarded at a Lenny Kravitz concert.

Just before dawn, I had done 20-ish laps. I was 6 up on second place, and wanted to see if Jeff would be willing to call a truce and just roll out a few more laps. As it turns out, Jeff was almost as happy as I was to stop racing: his second place was mathematically unassailable, and he wanted a hot breakfast.

So we did a lap together, hung out, took it easy... it turned out he knew a few of my friends and teammates from racing in college. It also turned out that he hadnt eaten in at least a lap, so I gave him what was left of my food and he took a break to keep a catastrophic bonk at bay.

At 8am we got breakfast, hung out in the lodge and started cleaning up our respective campsites. I wanted to watch the carnage (I mean, helpfully point out the good lines) as the two dozen or so first timers began to seriously question their burgeoning careers as bike racers in the mud bog at the bottom of the second climb, but not so much to actually climb my tired ass up there unnecessarily.

Jeff and I went out for a final, slow-as-death last lap at 10am. We walked every climb, talked about lines through the technical stuff and collectively cursed at a few choice obstacles that had wronged us over the previous 23 hours.

We sat next to the bear statues until he finishing horn blew, went through the timing tent together, shook hands and called it a day.


I had won my first 24 hour race.


On my birthday.

Hooray!

Race notes:

- I still dont know how many laps I actually did. I may or may not have been docked 2 (for mechanicals/ course cutting), but I also know I went out for my "20th lap" at least twice. So I estimate that I did 20-24 total laps in about 19 hours or racing.

- The guy in the scoring tent was there ALL NIGHT. His replacement didnt show because of bad weather, and he hung out and kept it going until dawn. Huge thank you, and recognition to the event for having such quality volunteers.

- The official results show 7 starters. By my count at the start area, there were at least 9 (I thought for sure it was 10). Maybe they didnt count day-of reg folks or something.

- I would have podium-ed at the 6, 12 and 24 hour team races. Apparently I had the second-fastest lap (between 36 and 37 minutes) as well

- This course gets better every year. Drainage issues aside, this is one of the best xc courses on the calendar. Such varied terrain really favored a well-rounded rider.

- Before this race, I had never really ridden a hardtail. Or a 29er. I am now used to both.