The Longest Day: E-100 12 Hour

Yesterday began early for both Kim and I. I got up at about 4:15, and Kim was already up and getting ready. It was a double-header.

Provo Triathlon

Kim was headed to the Provo triathlon. There are three separate locations around Utah Lake that I've seen her do races. Saratoga is a location of natural hot-springs and so they don't actually swim in the lake for that one. Lincoln Beach near Benjamin was the site of last week's tri, and this week's Utah Lake State Park.

Utah Lake took a lot of criticism as a location for a Triathlon in 2002 when the Ironman series came to compete and strong winds pushed big waves that scared the less experienced swimmers. To make matters much worse, one of the athletes died during the swim. At the time everyone assumed, and it was widely reported, that he had drown due to the weather. It was later discovered he actually died of a heart attack, but the damage had been done. The next year they held the race again, with a new sense of hyper-sensitivity that led to ultimately canceling the swim. Many of the athletes were disgruntled as they had traveled great distances to the race only to hold an Ironman duathlon, if you could call it that. The race was moved to Idaho after that.

It is too bad, because this is a pretty good location in a lot of ways. It is a great spectator location, it is easy to get to, easy to find lodging, and the swim is straight-forward so people can't accidentally short-cut, or even get especially far off course. The only downside to the swim is they have to swim through some reeds and the olympic athletes do two laps, so they get out of the water and back in.

So for Kim this was a pretty good race. I didn't see any of it, but she scored a third-overall finish in the women - a great result.

E-100 12 Hours

Meanwhile, Scott and I rode over to Park City with Brad Pilling to compete in the E-100 12 Hour race. Scott came to provide support. We set up a substantial pit area with 3 canopies and Carl from Revolution (who did a super job) to wrench for us and several other riders from or related to our team.

I won't say too much about the race. Each lap is about 9.07 miles with 1355 feet of climbing. The goal is basically to do as many laps as you can in 12 hours around the dusty, rocky course. I rode in 2nd-4th place most of the day, but the last few laps were really slow going. My last lap left me one lap short of truly finishing, but I had nothing left to give. Legs were OK, but I was dizzy, and having trouble breathing. 12 lbs of water is just too much weight to loose for a 150 lbs guy. My stomach was very uncomfortable for well over half the race. In total, I did 100 miles with almost 15,000 feet of climbing.

I'd like to say I had fun, but I didn't. I rode Monday and thought I had the stomach thing worked out, but I was obviously wrong and it was just suffer, suffer. It was much cooler Monday, which must have been the real key. After the race I was dead. It took me a long time to get to where I could even walk. The crazy thing is, today all I can think about it how to fix my stomach issues and do better (while I try to get rehydrated). Clinical.

The only real bright spots for me were 1) Brad won the race. I expected he'd beat me, but I admit the win surprised me. 2) Support. Scott and Bob provided support through the day. In the afternoon Toni and then Kim showed up when I was dying and provided a boost that kept me going a few more laps. Carl kept the bikes running, set up and tore down camp, and even racked my bikes on the van after the race since I couldn't really do it. 3) I've never done 100 miles off-road before, and this is real mountain bike terrain, a lot more difficult than for instance the White Rim in Moab.

Utah Mountains

I skipped the NMBS race today, instead opting for the other side of the "everlasting hills". How many places sport climbs like this without even driving to start the ride?

Deer Valley

Saturday's race played out just as I had spent the winter anticipating this season would go. It just happened to be in a different class.

Thirty guys showed up to Deer Valley for the week-before-Norba Intermountain Cup pro class. It rained much of last week and then was dry for a day or two, so the trails were perfect. The weather was cool, which also made the riding nice.

What was "as anticipated" was that Bp and I basically rode the entire race together. He actually led most of the race, with me in tow. This was a lot of fun. He passed four guys in one pass on the climb on the second lap.

The only tough thing about following was that, as we lapped riders, Bp would call out "2 Racers", and a few people failed to stay over for #2 (me), and merged back into me, two people actually causing enough of a hangup that we were stopped and un-clipped before getting going again. Maybe this is why some woman warned Chad about hip-checking as he went by? Hopefully not, but sorry to anyone if I offended. After this happened the second time, I became very proactive about adding my own warning of the presence of a second rider, and I think this helped.

After the race I was thinking about what a problem lapping traffic is on that course. When people are getting lapped on lap 2, it is an indication that the speed differential is very large. Some of those people were probably lapped by essentially all the pros and most of the experts, which would be something like 70 people. For them it would get really old moving over and stopping every time, and there isn't much room for moving over on the vast majority of the DV course. Additionally, these are the riders that are the least comfortable riding side-by-side on single-track. Unfortunately, Solitude and Joyride are not much better. All we can do is be patient, try to execute clean passes when the opportunity arises, and hope for good luck on when we catch people.

Anyway, Bp and I rode together the whole race and then I pulled a little lead on the last 12 & under Little-Stick climb which was enough to separate us from a sprint, and we finished 11th and 12th.

Meanwhile, Reed rode an excellent 19-29 race. He flatted on lap 2, changed his tube, and still finished 2nd.

Scott and Ian both raced with the 9 and unders. The climbing was a little steep for Ian, but they finished happy.

After the race Reed and I rode the 12 & under loop with Scott. He has really improved his skills over the past year and had no real difficulty on the switchbacks.

It was great to ride in a large field like that. Makes me consider doing the Norba race.

It's the bike, stupid

Sometimes a little laziness cancels out a lot of effort.

Preparation for racing includes hours on the bike, entry fees, packing up the family, unpacking the family, etc. etc. People spend literally thousands of dollars to shave off 2.5 minutes from their race.

Saturday I showed up to Sundance feeling fine and ready to race. Oooooh, check tire pressure? Too much work. Carry CO2, tube, and lever? Uncomfortable in the jersey. Besides, when was my last flat in a race? It was like 20 I-Cup races ago and Sundance isn't rough like 5 Mile.

It was a great day for a race, and everyone started really, really fast. Guess they all wanted the single-track. Part way into lap 1 I broke a spoke in the rear wheel. I could hear the clinking, but I couldn't see it. Anyway, it didn't matter.

During lap 2 I was feeling good and was descending a lot better than last week. I had put a nice gap into Art OConner when my bike suddenly got really loose on braking. The front tire was down to about 10 psi or something (Stans plugged whatever was leaking).

At that point I figured I was out of the race, but I coasted down to the bottom and rode back to the start-finish. Some guy ran to his car and saved me with a floor-pump. I was back in the race, and surprisingly only lost a little more than 2 minutes, but I never quite caught Art again.

At least I didn't have to worry about loosing points to Chad.

Semi-Pro

Monday AM was the Stan Crane race, and I decided to move up and race with the Pros. If you asked me before about May of this year, I'd have said, "No. Never. Too old, too many kids, too much work, too slow." So much for excuses.

I was pretty stressed from work and feeling down Sunday and Monday before the start. I can't say as I was particularly looking forward to the race, but at times like that I just have to turn on the auto-pilot. Somehow the exhaustion of a race usually switches the lights back on.

Ian and Scott both raced. I rode behind Ian to guide him around, but he didn't need anything more than navigational help. Scott rode a great race and finished better than ever. He was really excited about it. It was gratifying to see the kids have so much fun.

Our race started fast. My only unusual problem was the brake balance was really off, so I kept blundering the corners and actually crashed twice in the first lap - my worst two crashes of the year. I had a few other mess-ups in descending as well, but Bp got in the way and kept me from riding off the end of the sharpest switchback in the course on lap 2 :)

The coolest thing about racing pro was half way through the race when we had five guys wheel-to-wheel racing each other. I was almost always within sight of at least two competitors -- real racing.

Reed was there too, and raced an excellent 2nd place, although I didn't see much of him.

OK, as expected I didn't win, but I finished 5th, and I'm really happy about that. It is great to have a finish where I can say, 5th without asterisks, parenthesis, or caveats. Just 5th.