Race Day!

Okay, so it took me more than a day to get this post up..............My previous post talked about the day and night before the 24 hour adventure race. The morning of the race we were all stirring from our tents around 6:30 a.m. Race packet pick up (where you get the course maps) was scheduled from 8 - 10 a.m. Fortunately, we were on the early end of the packet pick up because the line grew long rapidly. After securing the maps, we headed back to our base camp, plotted our course and made final gear checks. A final race briefing began at 10:30 and lasted over an hour, giving us just a few minutes to assemble our gear and bikes at the start line. The race begins with a mass start and in order to spread the field out some, there was a prologue, which consisted of a two mile trail run. The temperature at noon was already approaching 100 degrees and Ronny Angell (Race Director) warned us all to take the first few hours easy and closely monitor our water intake. To quote Ronny: "You won't win this race in the first six hours, but you can certainly lose it". That comment, along with the "old school" Odyssey course comment, followed by the assertion that less than half the field would even finish the race stuck in my head for the first six hours. The four of us managed to stick near the front third of the pack for the trail run. Considering that there were close to 200 people starting the race (Sprint and 24 hour racers) we felt like we were off to a pretty good start. A couple of times I actually asked Kris to slow down, because we were so close to the front. At one point on the run, Steve shouted out that we only had 23 hours and 45 minutes left! We made our way back to the bikes, mounted up and headed out to checkpoint 1. After a couple miles on back roads, we were climbing steadily up a curvy mountain road, in search of the first checkpoint. The heat was already oppressive and only getting hotter by the minute! I should point out that this race is unsupported, which means you carry all your food and water for the entire race. We all had 200 oz. reservoirs filled with water, in addition to extra bottles on the bike or in our packs. After plotting our course earlier, we realized that we would need to stop and filter water from a stream after passing checkpoint 2, high on a ridge. After bagging checkpoint 1, we were off to track down checkpoint 2. Here is where it starts to get ugly! A fairly easy going ride on an overgrown fire road led us in the right direction, parallel to a ridge that we would eventually have to make our way toward. Another check of the map and we made the decision to start bushwhacking uphill toward the ridge. The grade of the mountain was obnoxious and covered in a tangled mess of undergrowth, making what would prove to be one of the toughest parts of the bike leg. After what seemed like forever, we made it to the overgrown ridge trail, soaked with sweat and legs and shoulders burning. We paused for a few minutes on the ridge to eat, drink and conduct minor bike maintenance before heading off down the ridge, still in search of checkpoint 2. The ridge was an unpleasant mix of semi-riding and pushing our bikes, while getting intimate with thorns, vines, rocks and spoke busting sticks. Somewhere along the ridge I heard Gary scream out in pain. He had just twisted his ankle pretty badly. We were less than three hours into the race. Just a few minutes later, Steve took a dive into the pedal of his bike and picked up a nice, deep gash to his shin. The real fun was about to begin in earnest. To be continued....... "Thrive Outside"