I'm not a big fan of paying someone for the privilege of riding my bike in circles. However, a number of friends were doing the 24 Hours in the Old Pueblo, and Nancy wanted to do it as a duo with me. Since I can deny her nothing, off went the registration form and a check.
I've done a few 24 hour races - but that was long ago, back in PA, and part of a 4 person team (Old n' Dirty). I'd never done a duo, so this would be interesting.
As the date for the race approached we had a little added drama, to make things interesting. Nancy has been riding the same mountain bike since 2001 and has been talking for years about getting a new one. She finally got the funds together in the last few months and has been demoing various bikes - trying to find "the one". There were a couple of false starts, but she finally decided on a bike. As it turned out, that decision came about 2 weeks before the race. So, could we get the bike delivered and set up in time to make the 24HOP it's coming out party?
After much discussion and decision making about parts, it was arranged to have the built bike and a few additional parts delivered on the Tuesday before the race. Unfortunately, the folks who sold and built the bike did a really poor job of quality assurance. As I started putting things together a number of issues came up. The bike had the wrong dropouts, the wrong bottom bracket, the wrong lockring for the front brake rotor, and two different brakes. Nancy spent quite a bit of time on the phone arranging overnight delivery of the correct components. We finally got things mostly sorted out Thursday night (with some help from Spencer at Flat Tire Bikes) in time to do a 50 minute shakedown ride. Next ride would be at the race venue.
Here is Nancy's new, 18.5 pound, magic bike before it got ridden and got dirty. It is complete except for the rear skewer, which didn't arrive until after the race. Post race, Nancy reports that the new bike is "awesome". I wonder if that plastic frame will last another 13 years.
This 24 hour race takes place in the desert outside of the town of Oracle. The nearest pavement is about 10 miles away. This non-descript spot in the desert gets turned into "24 Hour Town" for a few days each February. I'm sure the local fauna plan their vacations at that time - though I did hear a few coyotes on one of my late night laps.
We rolled in Friday, early afternoon - thinking we'd have no problem finding a camping spot. Wrong. The place was already crowded. We bumped down some pretty bad dirt roads to get to the "tent camping" area and found a small slice of dirt to claim. This was our home for the weekend.
After camp was set up we rolled down to the vendor area to check out the food options and see what was going on.
After checking things out we rolled out to do a lap of the course. It is about 16 miles and includes dirt roads, smooth, twisty single track, not much climbing, and so much cactus. The singletrack is really fun and fast. On the whole, this is a pretty fast, easy 16 mile course.
Here is a view of "24 Hour Town" from about halfway around the course. It is pretty amazing how this remote area turns into a mini city for a few days each year. The view of this at night is really cool. The course goes around that hill and down the left side flank to the finish. Most of the white you see is RVs and campers and the like. Us tent camping folks seemed to be in the minority.
Starting the final downhill. This was so much fun to rip at full speed.
Somewhere out on the course during the preride.
Moonset with a full moon.
Somehow I got elected to start the race. Those sawhorses will be packed with bikes by start time.This event has a "Le Mans" start. That means everyone stages their bikes here. The actual start is a half mile down the dirt road. When the gun goes off we all awkwardly run to our bikes and then start riding.
The crowds waiting for the racers.
Nothing more goofy than a bunch of bikers running in bike shoes. I saw a number of people lose things (iphone, pump, etc) from their back pockets while running down the road.
Here is a picture of my bike before my 3 laps at night. Putting glow sticks on the wheels is something we started back in the day with team Old n' Dirty. It looks really cool when the bike starts rolling.
Here is Nancy finishing up her final lap. Notice that someone wrapped the cholla with orange tape. You do NOT want to run into that thing. The guy on the left had stopped for a beer. At this point it was about 11:30. Nancy could easily have rolled down to the starting tent to do another lap. I looked at the standings and determined that another lap would not help our team position and not doing another would not hurt. Given that it was pretty warm by this point, and another lap would mean another 1.5 hours, we made a joint decision to call this the end. Nancy rolled down to near the finish tent, where many other people were waiting, and waited for 12:00 to finish. The rules of this race say that you HAVE to do another lap if you finish before noon so there is always a big group of people who don't want to do another lap that wait for noon to officially finish.
We ended up 7th out of 25 Co-ed Duo teams. Not bad considering that after my first two laps we were in 14th place. We stayed consistent and moved up slowly. Unfortunately, there was no subcategory for single speed. I'm guessing that there were few or none of the 25 teams that were SS.
In the end it was a really good weekend of riding. It was great seeing people we knew on the course, in the campground and waiting in the start/finish tent. Nancy put in a really impressive performance. Not sure if it was the new bike or just that she was feeling really good. I was quite sore and tired at the end, but happy with the 8 laps (128 miles) that we both got.
I'll go with what I told a team mate (Martin) after my first ever 24 hour race. "No way I'm ever doing that again". I ended up doing 4 more 24 hour races with him and others after that.
