“Go!”
Jim shouts one small word and the race has begun. It always feels unreal when you push into the first few pedal strokes of a 24 hour race. I want to scream, to sprint, to cry, and to vomit all at once. Instead, I just pedal and try to stay upright as the pack funnels down as we hit the first stretch of singletrack.
No suprises here, traffic. Quite a bit of traffic, actually. And some techy sections along the trail that are normally absent on a 24 hour course. This is going to be fun at 3am, I think to myself. The trail opens up eventually and I do my best to seperate myself from the pack so that I can ride my own pace on the largely singletrack course. I know that there is a legend riding in front of me. I have no intention of catching Tinker at this point in the race, I don’t even want to see him until morning, to be completely honest. My plan for the race is to ride my own race, not his race or anyone else’s race. I run into trouble when I try to ride other people’s races, I usually do alright when I go out and do the best that I can do and race my own race. That’s what I plan to do, until morning anyway. When the sun comes up, I figure that depending on what has happened through the night I may be able to mix it up with the big dogs. Think about it, even after the sun comes up, we still have 6 hours to race, about 3x as long as a standard xcrace; plenty of time to make something happen if you’re still in a position to do so. The tricky part about 24 hour racing is making it through the first 18hrs and still being in a position to race in the last 6hrs.
Yeah, I’m thinkingabout this duringthe first lap, and throughout the entire race until 1:30am. My pit is fantastic, I didn’t need to get off the bike until it got dark, just grabbed bottles and food and a running bike swap at one point. I never thought that I would be such a convert to full suspension, but wow, the Scalpel is just such a freaking fast bike that it’s really tough not to love every pedal stroke aboard that rocket ship of a bike. I picked up the Scalpel as night fell and pedaled off into the darkness, still feeling good, happy with my pace and convinced that I was riding within my limits. I was sure that I would have something left in the tank when morning came. To my suprise, Tinker was still in sight. In fact we were running quite close to one another and I realized at some point in the early hours of the night that the light which was glued to me 50 yards back was the light of the legend himself. His professionalism blew me away. Have you ever ridden with others at night and had a rider follow you closely down the trail? Your own shadow is cast into the path of your light, obscuring your vision and making it difficult for you to navigate the trail. Tinker was close enough that I knew he was there, but far enough back that his light never cast my shadow accross my path… It was incredibly professional, and also one of the most intimadating things I had ever encountered. Knowing that he was right there, just markingmy pace, never letting me get too far away, ready to go in for the kill when the time was right.
I left for a lap around 1am, Tinker had come through the pit and gone out on the lap ahead of me. Our pits were separated and Tink never came passed my crew so they never knew exactly where he was until they checked the results. The lap was going just as well as any other lap until just after the mid point on the course. Alicia was there to say “Hello!” and suggest that I grab some warmer clothes when I came through again. Oddly, I wasn’t really cold yet. The wind was howling through the trees and the creaking of the wood in the night was incredibly eerie…
I had just ridden up and over one of the little rock obsticles on the singletrack back half of the course and sat down to pedal on when a horrendous explosion came from my rear wheel and my world fell apart in the darkness. I screamed out loud into the night, cursingwildly, not believing that something, that anything could have gone wrong. “Why now, why here? Really, you have got to be F***ing kidding me!” I examined the damage and realized that my rear derailluerhad been torn from the drop outs and the the carbon cage had been snapped in half. I still don’t know what exactly happened. Did I cross chain? Did I smash into a rock? It’s tough to say, all I know is that the damage was extensive. I yelled a little more at the darkness before realizing that my anger was not going to get me back into the pits and to my spare bike and that the creatures of the night and the groaning trees didn’t care what had happened to my bike and were completely unwilling to lend any assistance. Not only that, I wasn’t one to freak out in these sort of situations… Wait, I had never been in this situation.
At first, I ran. That lasted for about five minutes and I realized just how hopelessly far away from the pits I was on foot. No, I needed to try to fix this problem and ride back. It was a risk however, because there was a very real chance that I would not be able to fix the bike and would simply waste valuable time which I could have spent running towards the finish. I had to try.
I stopped running, I took a few deep breathes, then I looked at what was left of my drivetrain, accepted that this was the situation that I was in and started to think about how I was going to get myself out of it. My derailluer was beyond cooked, it was well done. But, my chain, cassette, and chainrings had all survived the catastrophe. Who needs a derailluer anyway? This is the first season that I have raced with the goofy things anyway, they’re nothing but trouble. So, I disconnected my chain, my derailluer cable and tore the haggard piece of componentry off along with half of the mangled hanger. I tied off the cable and housing on the seatstay and then came the tricky part. I had to try to figure out which combination of chainring and cog would allow me to cut the chain and run the bike as a single speed back to the finish line.
I measured the chain out, cut it and wrapped it around my chosen gear. The first attempt failed miserably and the chain refused to stay on the bike because there was too much slack. I got off and ran once again, convinced that the trail side repair would never work. After about a half mile, I knew I had to try the repair once again. A rider rolled by me and I had the sense to ask him to inform the timing tent that I had had a mechanical and that I was okay, but that I would be way off the pace on this lap. I could only imagine what it must be like in the pits in the darkest hours of the night when your racer simply doesn’t arrive when he is supposed to. And then twenty minutes goes by and he still hasn’t shown up… Alicia hadn’t slept the night before the race for fear of being eaten by a bear and I’m sure she was convinced that I had been eaten alive by a hungry nocturnal predator.
No, I was just out playing bike mechanic in the dark, that’s all. My second attempt at finding the proper gear ratio proved more effective. I nearly soft pedaled the bike for the rest of the lap because I just wasn’t sure of the reliability of my early morning McGiver skills. I had become cold while I stood in the dark frantically trying to repair my injured steed and I only realized just how cold when I had crested the final fire road climb on the back side of the course and began to descend towards the pit on the wind swept western side of the hill. The wind howled through the darkness and tore through my thin jersey and arm warmers effectively turning me into a popsicle by the time I made it back to the pits.
I came through knowing that my chances of victory had been torn apart along with my derailluer, but I had no intentions of stopping. I had a spare bike, it was not the ideal bike for the course, but it would have to do the trick. I had borrowed a bike from a friend before the race as a back up, but hadn’t really planned on riding it. I put my seat and bars on, but left the drivetrain alone. Big mistake. The bike was set up with a single 34 t ring up front, and a 12-23 road cassette on the back… damn. It would have been one thing if I was still training and racing single speeds, but I wasn’t. In fact, I don’t even have a single speed built up. It’s a different style of riding, one which I had not practiced in quite some time. The real issue though wasn’t the bike set up. The real issue was that I had cooled off during my ordeal, I had become cold and I had been off the bike long enough that my legs had decided we must be done racing. I can’t say I blame them for the misunderstanding either; after all, we had been on the bike for 13 hours and change when this whole ordeal came about.
Sorry legs, we’re not done yet. It took me a couple of laps to find anything resembling a rhythm once again and by that time I had lost a substantial chunk of time to Tinker. I knew that I would not be pulling him back if the race continued on in the way it was. I cursed my bike for breaking, I cursed the cold darkness, and I cursed my legs for trying to relax when I needed them to keep turning the pedals. Then, I realized two things: I had been able to keep my cool and make the best of a terrible mishap in a substantially less than ideal situation, and the only reason that I was hating life so much right now was because of my own stupid decision not to transfer a standard drivetrain onto my spare bike. I had all the parts at home in the garage. Hell, I could have been riding the Scalpel again if I would have brought the spare parts to fix it. But I realized something else too: This was just another experience to learn from. Sure, I could get pissed off and blame everyone and everything else for my misfortune, but what good would that do? Instead, I decided to accept the fact that I was unprepared, learn from this experience and take something useful away from it.
The sun came up and I wasn’t really able to pick up the pace. The loss of my rhythm and body heat in the early morning had hurt me more than I had realized. It was like I was riding a freight train which had been derailed and I just couldn’t get it back up to speed once it was back on track. My knees felt like they were going to explode by the last couple of hours of the race and I was dreading the descents because my feet and hands were so destroyed from hours of bumps and jostles. The only thing that really stands out for me about the morning hours is bashing my left foot into a stump on the first section of single track. I knew I had been cutting it close as I went around the stump all day, but I was off by a couple of inches on one early morning lap and I smashed my foot into that stump with full pedaling momentum. I was sure that when I pulled my shoe off after the race, it would be filled with blood, I was sceptical that my pinky toe was even still attached. Turns out it was still connected to my foot and there was no blood, it was black and blue for like two weeks following the race though.
When the race was finally over, I had completed 22 laps, one less than Tinker. The day was not a failure though, simply another learning experience. I learned not only from my early morning mechanical failure(the moonlight massacre), but also from racing with a legend like Tinker. Just watching him and competing with him makes me a stronger racer and if I have to get my butt kicked, I can’t think of anyone I would rather have kicking it than him.
My pit crew was amazing and it was great to see how everyone really comes together when there’s a racer in need. My crew even borrowed parts from Tink’s mechanic in an effort to fix my broken bike, how cool is that?! The Cannondale bikes were awesome, as always(the moonlight massacre was no fault of the bike), and the course was probably the best I have ever ridden. Thanks to Mike Harrison for getting me out to the race, Alicia and the rest of the crew for taking such good care of me, Pete and the Dirt City guys for lending a hand whenever and wherever it could be lent, and to Jim, the Auburn Bike Works crew and the rest of the volunteers for putting on another incredible event.
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