24-hours of Adrenalin race today!
My biggest cycling event of the year starts in less than 4 hours! I'm pretty excited and a little nervous. I'm racing in the 24-hours of Adrenalin mountain bike endurance race in Monterey. I'm on a 5-person coed team (4 guys and me).
The race starts Saturday at noon and ends on Sunday at noon. The course is about 12 miles long. I'm in position 4 and will probably ride 4 or 5 laps – two will be night laps.
The Luna Chix pro team will be competing. Alison Dunlap, Marla Streb, Shonny Vanlandingham and Katerina Hanusova will be racing in the 4-person class (men's division) because there isn’t a 4-person women's class. I sure hope I don't end holding Alison Dunlap up on a tiny single track section!!
We rented a motor home. We set it up at our campgrounds last night and had a pasta feed for my team. (My husband makes fantastic marinara sauce!)
The race starts in 3 hours and 36 minutes…
Better late than never.... here's the report
Whoa! What an event! It really was 24 hours of Adrenalin! We finished in 15th place in the coed division. The coed division doesn't have age groups, so we were competing against teams that were half our age! The team in 14th place was college students (Their total team age was under 150. My team was over 250). They beat us out of 14th place by 43 seconds over 24 hours. That's 1.9 seconds per lap!!!
The race starts with a LeMans start. The lead-off riders from each of the 300 teams run about 600 meters up and around a hill (in biking shoes, helmets and camel backs). After the run, they grab their bikes to start their first lap. This helps to spread the field out a little. And it adds excitement!
I did 4 laps. My first lap was my fasted despite having a rather scary incident. Riding through some bumpy single track, I thought I had blown my front fork. The front end was chattering. I pulled off the trail and picked up my bike to check it out and my front wheel fell off!! The skewer had loosened and I just avoided a major disaster!!! How's that for adrenalin!
Lap 2 and 3 were in the dark. I'm not an especially strong night rider, but I chugged it out. Lap 3 was particularly difficult because it was really foggy. 5 feet of visibility while bombing down a gravel road is pretty scary! Then lap 4 was just after sunrise, cool, windless and an absolute pleasure! I beat my projected times on all four laps! Having a time goal really pushed me!
One of my team mates had a bad fall. His front tire blew out and he crashed on a 20mph gravel section. The whole left side of his body is rashed! Ouch! But he got up and finished the lap. He's one tough dude!
My husband, Robert, was there for the entire race. He was our resident pit wrench, and my personal helper. He was there at the start and finish of all my laps. He prepared all my meals. He had my bike ready. He did a million other little things. But most of all he was my own cheering section and president of my fan club! I couldn't have done it without him!
Overall it was a fantastic event. I enjoyed second of the 24 hours! It is really satisfying to push as hard as you can and feel that you really did your very best! There's also something special about working that hard for a team result. Our team had great chemistry. We were all in it together and everyone worked as hard as they could! I can't wait to do it again… But first I have to catch up on some sleep and do a mountain of laundry!
