Burn 24 hour race

I hadn't done a team 24 hour race since 2002 or something like that. While it was most certainly easier than a Solo 24, it was not without it's challenges..mostly logistics, communication, and of course keeping everyone happy and motivated..some people are easier than others!

Overall, we had a great race. Eddie and I raced with three of our friends who do not race much, but they are all fast and fun people. We spend a lot of our weekends riding with them so we thought it would be a fun thing to do and the BURN 24 hour is seriously the best 24 hour race I have ever been to.

We did have one very low point in the race and it came early. This is how it went down....

I was 5th in the rotation and John was supposed to go out after me. The rules, as I understand them, are that all transitions must occur in the transition zone just past the Start/Finish line. I thought my laps would be 45 min or so but I actually came in at 41 minutes and change. John wasn't ready so I soft pedaled for a few strokes as I yelled for him but none of our other teammates knew where he was either. So, I reluctantly kept pedaling to pull a double and yelled for Eddie to please get me a bottle with some calories so I didn't bonk that early into the race. A few seconds later as I was hitting the singletrack, I heard yelling...it was John catching up to me. He said, "pull the plug, I got it!" I was confused..I didn't think this was legal..but at the time I thought they must have let them come switch out with me. He said he was just behind the transition tent but didn't see me. For whatever reason I let him go and I kept soft pedaling to spin my legs out. I let about 12 people pass me since I wasn't racing this lap. Then, I came up to the first intersection and Eddie was standing there. We discussed what had just happened and neither of us felt it was right. After a few minutes of wondering what to do, I decided to race out the lap and Eddie would go find John to pull him from the course. True, I had just wasted 10 minutes on the lap but it was better that we did the right thing. If it meant not winning the race it was OK, a first place is nothing if you don't feel good about it. If I had let John keep going and bailed on the lap, it probably wouldn't have changed anything in the outcome but it felt wrong.

I ended up with a 49 minute lap but happy with it. John apologized for his mistake and the rest of the race was ON. Because of that extra long lap we had to go neck and neck with the Cycles de Oro team from Greensboro for the entire 24 hours. There was no slacking or taking it easy. We pushed and pushed and eventually came out on top. To make things even better, I won the fastest female day AND night laps. Nice surprise!

The course was really slick with all the wet roots and really soft in some spots with the mud. But, the weather held out and the entire weekend was perfect. We ended up with 35 laps, one lap up on the co-ed field, and in 7th place overall out of 436 racers.

I'm slowly getting some photos uploaded to flickr --->

Thanks again to Brushy Mountain Cycling Club for another stellar event! Thanks to the sponsors for supporting the race, especially Topeak, Ergon, Twin Six, Bike Rumor, Chamois Butt'r, and Raxter. Thanks to Chris Hines for donating his weekend to come up to support us and take some great photos. Look for them online sometime soon!

Oh! I almost forgot...the 2010 Rotwild is a-m-a-z-i-n-g. The new frame and components, plus the Sram xx, plus the Wobble-naught fit had me smiling pretty much every second I was riding it. Seriously.