24 Hrs of Extreme Fun

What better way to spend Memorial Day than to ride our mountain bikes for 24 hours! That's right, 24 hrs. I've got to hand it to Jarred he keeps our lives pretty exciting.

Last fall, Jarred decided that he wanted to race in a 24 hr. mountain bike race. He chose the Round and Round in Spokane because of the closeness to our house (our other choices were Moab, Wisconson or somewhere back east) and because it's suppose to be a good intro race for those who have never raced in a 24 hr. race before. Jarred had actually never even raced his mountain bike but as everyone knows, Jarred does not like to start small and wean his way into a sport. His idea of introducing himself to a sport is to do the hardest run, climb or route possible and THEN see if he wants to continue pursuing the sport.

Originally I'd volunteered to run support (cook, fill water bottles, clean bikes and keep tired racers motivated in the wee hours of the night) but Jarred's team ended up needing a fourth person, so before I knew it, I was gearing up to ride my mtn. bike 90 miles over the course of 24 hrs. I have to admit, I was a little intimidated because not only had I never ridden my mtn. bike more than 20 miles but I'd also never raced my mtn. bike. Jarred's team consisted of two other riders from the Portland area, Ryan Kiligran and Chris Brannen. Both ride obsessivly and race although they too had never raced a 24 hr. race. At least they'd ridden on longer rides and knew how to ride in groups! I went into the experience figuring I'd be happy if I could consistantly ride through the 24 hrs and not bonk.

Jarred and I arrived at the course Friday morning to claim a "sleeping" spot and to check out the course. We had my truck full of biking gear, tents, tables and more food than we really needed. This bike racing was proving to be like going to a horse show...one can't go without a lot of STUFF. As we set up our camp, we ran into some Idaho friends...some professional mountain biking Idaho friends. Those who were not professional mountain bikers had been professionals at some sort of sport in the past. I'd forgotten that everyone from Sun Valley is has had some sort of professional extreme sports career. This added to my intimidation. What was I doing out with all these gnarly bikers...people who'd won the 24 hr. World Championships last year????

As Jarred and I headed out to pre-ride the course, my fears were somewhat squealched. The course proved to be a great beginners course...not too steep, not too techincal...15 miles of pretty easy terrain. Now could I just ride that course 6 times?

Ryan, Chris, Jarred and I finally met up Saturday morning a couple of hours before the race started. It was decided that I would do the first lap because the first lap required a running start, called a Le Mans start. All the bikers line up at the start line and run 600 yards around a course and back to their bikes. The point of this is to break the riders up...imagine 200 riders starting out on a course all at once...I saw the rationale behind the Le Mans start. I didn't see the rationale behind why I had to be the first rider....once the guys found out that they had to run the first lap...their bodies started breaking down. Chris had a sore knee, Jarred's ankle was still sore from falling down Mt. Hood. As I agreed to do the running and first lap, I wondered how these poor ailing boys would get through 24 hrs of riding.

The next 24 hrs flew by. Every three and a half hours, I would get on my bike and ride the 15 mile loop. Riding in the dark proved to be a different experience. I'd ridden at night before, for fun, but not in a race on a course that was super dusty. Once the sun went down and we put our lights on, the dust felt like riding through fog. Between the dark and the dust, my lap times slowed down by about 10 minutes. I was averaging 1:15 laps, the guys were averaging 1:00 laps. Ryan was our strongest rider even though he quickly decided that 24 hr. races were not for him. He continuously posted sub 1 hr. times and was the ever present bike mechanic for our team. The hardest lap by far was my 1 am lap. I just didn't want to get on my bike, my body was telling me that I should be in bed, not huffing and puffing for another hour! The motivator in the wee hours of the night was that our team was sitting 6th overall in our 4 man open division. We'd started out the race just wanted to finish and were thrilled to be doing so well. Unfortunatly, we slowed down a little and were not going to get as many laps in as other teams, so we ended up dropping to 11th out of 24 teams by the end of the race. I was still impressed. And after 6 laps I was still alive! I still felt like a weenie though as I congradulated the girl and her husband camped next to us. They'd both soloed the event (that's right, they rode as much as they could ALONE for 24 hrs.) and the girl was acting like she hadn't even rode, she was so chipper. I wanted to ask her if she'd just taken a bunch of meth and rode the race because I didn't even feel as chipper as her and I'd ridden on a team!

I came away from the race really feeling like I'd accomplished something. Not only was I toasted from the exertion but I was motivated to ride harder and longer and to come back and do the race again next year.