doing it all night long

over a year ago, I raced my first 24-hour mountain bike race as part of a five-woman team. considering I'm a roadie through and through, this was a big accomplishment for me. my lap times were good and I had lots of fun.....until the night lap. I headed out for about a mile, scared myself to the point of being dangerous, turned around, woke up a teammate to take my place, and cried myself to sleep. after that weekend, I decided 24-hour racing just wasn't my thing. but since I love endurance events, I decided to do the 8-hour solo event this year.

best laid plans, I guess. somehow, I raised my hand and signed up to race a two-woman team with my teammie, Justine. Justine is an endurance racing guru -- that's pretty much all she does and she usually does it solo: 8 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours. what the hell -- it would be a good goal for me, right?

long story short (because I'm too busy these days to write a long story), we raced. it wasn't flawless. we were the only two-woman team in the 2-person category. we raced 14 laps (170 miles) and finished in 4th place (of 5 teams, so we "girled" one team of boys). of note, the 2nd and 3rd place teams finished only one lap up on us. I rode not one, but two night laps, the second lap missing one light (scary). I ate wrong and got a terrible belly ache in the middle of the night and missed my 4:30am lap but got back out there in the morning.

total for the weekend: 6 laps, 72.33 miles, 9+ hours on the mtn bike, 9,648' of climbing, aches and pains everywhere (even my eyeballs), oh, and that stupid le mans start run (blech!). considering my primary goals were to conquer the night riding and to complete as many laps as I could, I was pretty proud of myself.

my teammie is a total stud. she finished 8 laps (almost 100 miles). she and her boyfriend, John, make an incredible team. Justine really knows how to race endurance events and it was such a fabulous learning experience for me.

and we couldn't have done it without Hans and John, who took care of us, fed us, rubbed us, wrenched for us, dressed us, nudged us to keep going, and were just plain heros in my book. although these races are solo or team events, I truly believe you can't succeed without the support of your crew (especially if you race solo or two-person), and we had the best!



I learned a lot of good lessons this weekend (about racing endurance events and about life). if I ever do this again, I expect to put those lessons to good use and have that much more fun!

shyte! did I just say this was fun?