18 Hours of Fruita

THE PLAYERS

Wow where do I begin...there's a lot to cover on a 18 hour race. Lets start with The Team;

Ivy & Kitty - The Power Couple/Power House....these two are cut from a different fabric, if I had to name the fabric it would probably be a mix between lycra, gortex, and something far more extreme. I swear these guys don't feel pain or show weakness.

Seth & Eugie - Seth's focused, determined and gets the job done without complaining. Eugie shows up, complains, kind of gets the job done and has a great time doing it. We are good together tho, mainly because Seth steps up his game to cover me. Gotta love him!

The Race: 18 hours mountain bike race. The course is a fun 6 mile zippy trail, fast, lots of turns, mainly single track and never did anyone ride the same trail twice.

Objective: To ride the most number of laps possible in 18 hours.

Our Plan: Win, well maybe not win-win...

The race started at midnight with a mass Le Maun start...which is weird...everyone set up their bikes near the entrance to the trail, then the racers were about 100 meters from their bikes then they do a running start to their bike...it was kind of a odd start, so we had Ivy do the start, and he was the perfect player for the job, out of 90 racers he was like the 5th on the trail...

Ivy and Seth took care of the 1st 4 hours of racing while Kitty and I tried to sleep...but I couldn't sleep because our camp was next to the timing station, which should not have been all that bad except they had three 15 year old boys DJ'ing the party....the music was crazy loud , and they blared music until 2am!!!! There was no rest. My first lap started around 3:30am...I got ready to go, and my bike battery dies before I even got on the course...seriously...I didn't even get a solid 30 seconds out of my light, so in a panic I went back to camp and woke everyone up to get a new bike light...all we had was a handle bar light...which was fine if the course was straight, but this course had a ton of turns!!! So on the course I was guessing half the time where things were. Hahaha , I just rode behind people with good lights, so I could see in front of them. I did 2 laps, then Kitty did 2 laps, I did 2 more, then Kitty did 2 more. Now everyone is awake and we decided we would be faster if everyone just does one lap each time, bust 'em out ninja style. By then we saw that we were in 2nd place...very exciting...at that point I think we were 11 minutes behind 1st place...kind of my fault because of the light problem...so we focus on trying to keep 2nd place.

About 4 more laps pass and we were bumped down to 3rd place. The fight was on, we kept our heads down and really started to turn on the heat, everyone on the team was coming out with great times on their laps. Ivy and Seth were definitely our powerhouse, they were consistent and strong, they rode well in all sorts of conditions....I give them both 5 gold stars.

Everything was going really smooth, and we barely bumped up to 2nd place. Then I over heard friends of the 3rd place team talking about how they were going to stop racing their female to catch us...which is legal...but shady. That fired us up even more. We raced for a few more hours and we are doing well...then I think we had about 2 more hours of racing left when Ivy found out we were TWO seconds from first place....yeah we were making up crazy amounts of time...we didn't even bother checking that earlier because we were so far behind them...well upon further investigation it looked like we actually pulled ahead 4 minutes on first place...we were solid 1st. Then the heavens opened up and it poured rain on the trail...and poor Kitty had the worst ride of her life, it had nothing to do with her, she is an excellent biker, she just had the worst trail to ride on...the trail became one big mud puddle...her bike was stuck solid in the mud. It would not roll...it was then too heavy to carry, she couldn't walk up the hill because it was too muddy. It was a muddy hell for her. People were aborting the course anyway they could. Unfortunately Kitty was completely isolated from help. We found out she was stuck about 40 minutes after she was stuck...and then we made some mistakes on the tactical side of things...I won't go into to details...but we were listening and trusting race officials....and we should have just done our own thing....oh well poor Kitty had the WORST luck on being out there at that time with that rain and mud. Her poor bike was just a mess...there were other people on the trail who were breaking derailers and chains being out there in the mud. Well...because of mother natures nastiness....we then lost the 4 minute lead and their team put 3 minutes on us and then Ivy was the last one to go out and he rode like an animal and made up about 2 minutes and 40 seconds on this guy...so the final outcome...we lost 1st place by 20 seconds....even thought we lost...we totally spanked 1st pace team....we came out of no where, and had them freaking out. I'm super happy we got 2nd place...I was really surprised, from our team only Ivy had endurance mountain biking experience...and Kitty has never raced mountain bikes...I'm really proud of our team...they are a bunch a bad aces.

Overall: I had a great time! It was so much fun, like real fun...I was just happy while I was riding. I learned a lot, things to do, other things not to do, but it was great. I also like the team aspect, it was nice racing with Seth. The most important this is now with all those extra calories burned I get to enjoy a Lady's Brunch Burger...if you can't tell from the above picture, that is a hamburger between two Krispie Kream donuts, topped with a fried egg and two strips of bacon....come to think of it, maybe I should wait on this until I do an Ironman....and then maybe I will break even with calories.