73.7 Miles and 12 hours of smiles

This Saturday marked my first race this season having decided to stick to endurance mountain bike events and triathlons this summer. While my knee has been iffy and my training a little less than I wished it was, Dirty Picasso Girl and I decided to do a two person, 12 hour team for the 6/12 hours of Addison Oaks.

We arrived at Addison later than we wanted to thanks to a freeway detour that had us taking side roads up through Royal Oak and Birmingham and the long drive down Rochester road felt like it was taking forever, but we finally made it.

We found the team compound being setup, dropped off the food goods for the day, got registered and started getting ready. After the announcements I had about six minutes to get ready for the first lap. Luckily I had some of my gear on, so I got back to the start with one minute to spare.

The first lap wasn't too bad, lots of being passed, but I was out there for 12 hours so I didn't plan on winning it in the first lap. First strange sight of the day, half a squirrel with the tail still moving. First feeling of my newly stans'd tubeless tire loosing pressure.

Got back in, handed off to DPG and she rolled out and I filled my tubeless tire, shook it all around and it seemed to be sealed up so I decided to run with it still. This turned out to be a bad idea as it started to deflate a third of the way into my second lap. Pulled out the inflater, shot some C02 in it, went to pull off the inflater and out came the valve stem with it resulting in a flatter than flat tire. Luckily I had another co2, I screwed the inflater back in, stuck the new c02 cartridge in the inflater, shot air in the tire and then left the inflater head on the wheel and pulled the co2 off. Hole plugged, but it was ugly. I managed to ride almost all the way out and only had to run the last 1/4 mile on that lap.

Back at the compound I went back to my old setup and put a tube equipped wheel and tire on, back in business and ready to rock. DPG came in and I went out for a double, almost hitting a cat at the top of the fence climb! I was starting to feel the flow of the trail, but my legs were letting me know how under trained I was. DPG went out for the next double and I did one more at which time we switched to singles for the duration.

The next couple laps felt hard, I didn't have good recovery food back at the compound, I had to do something different so I tried some endurolytes, sure enough, my kick was back. At this point I was feeling the flow, I knew every shift point on the trail, but I was flopping down into granny gear for the last climb to save my legs. Both us and the other 12 hour team had an even lap count and we had to keep going even if my mind was ready to settle for drinking beer at the compound. :) Lap #9, that damn cat is back running right up the middle of the trail where myself and a 12 hour solo rider we hitting out brakes and laughing our asses of how this cat was out playing with everyone today. We both looked up in time to see a deer bound off into the woods, it was a cool race for seeing nature, but that cat probably lost a life or two that day. :)

As the night fell the cooler temps really helped us turn it up, my last two laps were great and I was able to push as hard as I was in the morning, the potato and endurolyte combo really worked for recovery. The second to the last lap in partial day light was in the 35 minute range, I was astounded, but the coolest part of the race was taking off in complete darkness with only my headlamp and the moon behind me. I got to the top of the first two track climb and started to spin when I noticed a bat flying along in front of me, guiding my way down the corridor of trees. He flapped and bobbed back and fourth fairly erratically and I chased after him until he pulled off just before the fun downhill at the gate. As the moon was huge and bright I kept looking back thinking it was another rider, but I never saw another soul on the last solo run. I was more timid in the downhills and missed some of the features I used as land marks for the twisty navigation, but still did ok.

Upon getting back in I found DPG waiting for me at the timing booth, we won! Well at least we thought we won, turns out we were actually a lap down. :( Even so, we made amazing accomplishments that day. Together we rode 134 miles of mostly single track, we never both took a break at the same time for the over 12 hours of riding. We gave it our all, I made a personal single track mileage record and had a blast doing it. A huge thanks to Cycle To Fitness and the Greyhounds crew!

We'll be passing on Boyne next weekend in favor of viewing the Tour de Leelanau, however the 12 hours of Ithaca seems to be calling.