this will be the year of many abbreviations, in a series of posts of many abbreviations. The underlying theme for this race, as always, was the weather. It snowed the day before. it rained the day before. it was generally miserable the day before.

Several of my team were going down ahead of time to reserve space, which was awesome. Several of them had days off, and RV trailers, which was awesome. I had neither. And with good intentions would have come down after work Friday in cold but dry weather, but no fucking way was i coming down earlier than Saturday morning with the mess pouring from the sky. The scars from the ’05 winter hurricane race were unforgettable. And weather.com has an excellent hourly forecast, which clearly showed the rain stopping Friday at midnight and leading into a clear, dry and then sunny weekend. The OP track dries fast, and the thing about Arizona is: the weather may change, but never rapidly. So Saturday AM it would be! I missed out on the partying with my friends, but going into the weekend with everything warm and dry made the wet weather a non-issue for me, other than it simply being something that happened, and would be cold.

something that happened

and would be cold

the worst i would see of the weather would the drive in, and my first lap before the sun dried out the course. the drive in was 10 miles of dirt roads, and it was quite simply the worst road I had ever driven down. Several days of biker and camp traffic, mixed with the slow wet weather, turned the road into a sandy muddy bog with deep ruts and pools. I had a 4WD, so kinda had fun drifting through the turns and charging down the straightaways. It was like a warm-up to the race. Not everyone was so well equipped or of such mindset, for as soon as i turned off the highway, I sailed up on a wussy in a Tacoma afraid to pass a guy in a Prius. it gave me no such pause; I figured if a road full of racers couldn’t handle it, it’d be a public service to remind them of passing etiquette now.

the truck, upon arriving home

I found our camp pretty easily; past years’ mistakes taught me to know ahead-of-time what street our spot was at, and the advantage of arriving in daylight to find your truck and bikes and EZUPs amidst hundreds of other trucks and bikes and EZUPs. One teammate Rick came in Thursday afternoon to get us space. JB (CactusJoe) came in Friday morning with an RV trailer. And we had, relatively speaking, lots of space for tents and parking, lots of coverage, and a spot to get warm. Compared to ’04 and ’05 where i froze in my leaky tent, it was like staying at the Luxor. I stepped into the cold at 8am in great spirits, greeted by Mike H (pwrtrainer) and Mike R (bike=good).

Our team situation was planned, but fundamentally casual. Like Ultimate, a 24 race is a team sport, and its key to your enjoyment to be a good match with your team. JB basically arranged a bunch of his friends into 2 groups of sort-of compatible racer-types. My team of Mike, Mike and Landon was the more intense team. JB, Rick, Mo (eabos) and Chris (dirtrodr) were the fun team. This sorta made sense, as I am doing the enduro thing and always ride hard, and Mike and Landon both raced MBAA last year. and Mike R didn’t overtly want to go for fun and thus would be on the aggro team by default . Whatever, I was glad we would try to go hard, but had no expectations other than to push myself for at least 4 hard laps, avoid fuckups and mechanicals, and enjoy a good day on the bike. Personally i was treating it like another enduro where i would push myself hard, but keep my focus on myself. As a team, we just weren’t serious about the event compared to people trying to win and train and working hard at racing…to take ourselves too seriously. So we didn’t get too wrapped up in the score. which was good, it would have ruined things. Chris dropped the week-of, and wound up being replaced by a friend of a friend named Christina, who probably was the fastest on the casual We’re Huge in Japan squad. but being new in town just before the event, she was stuck being a pickup. Meanwhile on our team, the Funky Taint Pads, Mike R had only the choices of a fixed-gear or his Yeti 575. Landon was doing school, and for my part i got my ass kicked by work and ate horribly the week before. its good when you have your excuses all lined up!

the other nice thing about having actually planned out our teams is we were able to sort out enough logistics to make the weekend quite civilized. In addition to Rick and JB doing the site and trailer, i brought all the firewood in all my available bed space (barely made a dent in our 2 giant piles), Mo brought the firepit, others did alcohol and food and tools, Christina brought cookies, and we actually had 2 extra 10×10 EZUPs we didn’t even use. The only thing we missed was a way to play music. i’ve come to realize that a bike race weekend of camping is not the same as a camping weekend; power and warmth and structure are indispensable. While having an EZUP is the ultimate corruption of car-camping over being back-to-nature, it is quite empowering! I may have to buy another one after we take this one to Rocky Point.

i checked out the t-shirts and shwag while relaxing in JB’s trailer. Good haul – some super-small containers of lube perfect for a camelback, a 2oz of Stan’s, and several Cliff shots from one of the title sponsors. Cliff kept putting out shots and blocks and bars at their booth all weekend, and coincidentally enough i kept passing by there all weekend — it was practically a sag stop woohoo! Meanwhile we heard that Landon, Mo and Christina were still a ways from arriving at camp, and we had to start thinking about our riding order. Mike H hates starts and assured me Landon felt the same, Mike R had never done a race, and i had never experienced a start. So The Mikes convinced me i had to do it! I figured what the hell, 4 or more laps on a relatively tame XC course…some novelty and excitement would be fun.

The sun came out just before the start, and it became pretty darn good riding weather. I wore my absolutely shittiest jersey knowing it would be covered in mud, and carried a small scrub brush in my hand as I walked the half-mile to the start line to pile into the line-up with several hundred others. 30 seconds to wipe the mud out of my cleats after running to the bike would be time well spent. I saw Aaron from Al’s Moab trips, Walt going in a sleeveless jersey (actually I just spotted Walt’s giant guns from about 200 yards away, which looked like 2 giant xmas hams on top of a tiny bike), and Chad from the enduro\underground races. I was near front of the pack at the start line, but knew i was going to run slow. i wasn’t going to fug up my knee running in mud in bike shoes, just to save me a minute or 2 i could make up on the bike, and who really cared anyway? which was good, cause after about 50 yards i realized how little i run anymore, and how tiring it is, and just settled into a slow jog and enjoyed all the screaming and people. I had a big smile on my face for the run, and despite running past my bike and having to fight upstream to get it, it was a fun experience.

The first lap was a zoo. They re-routed the first lap to skip about 5 minutes of single track, so effectively the first 20 minutes or so was a jeep road. I passed a bunch of people early on, and fought my way up the 7 Bitches while continuing to try to get ahead of the masses. It was like any peloton – you had to be really aggressive, and also accept that some moves you were not going to be able to make since it just wasn’t safe. The pack thinned out some, and the passing slowed down in the first singletrack stretch, which was very tight and lined with cactus. I tried to just conserve and catch my breath, but after about 10 minutes was getting aggravated that no one was passing the one or 2 people who clearly were holding our line up. We came into a double-track, and i shot around a bunch of people; others did the same, and from there on the lap flowed relatively smoothly and i forgot how crowded the course was. the initial shake-out was done.

This year the course was changed to remove about 2 miles of downhill jeep trail and replace it with 3 miles of tight twisty singletrack. It definitely made the course harder and more fun, but easily added 15 minutes to my lap times. It was also mostly uphill, so after the fast start and downhill for the first ~6 miles, there were about 8 miles of gradual climbing through some tight stuff. Mixed in with the climb were half a dozen muddy stretches of 100-400 yards. The course mostly dried, but then you’d drop into the littlest gear and barely be moving through a mudpit. It affected my times somewhat, if nothing else by how tired i got trying to stay vertical in the pits. I didn’t feel as fast as in past years, but wasn’t sure if the course or the mud or just my fat ass was the reason. I got passed a few times on the last 2 miles of the climb, once by some douchebag who knocked bars with me and almost sent me into a cactus. But that was about the only bad pass of the weekend, and it fired me up to finish the lap as i wound up right on that prick’s wheel going down the last rocky mile of the course. He was a typical sport-type racer who has some legs but no skills, and slowed down even in easy rocks, but much to my frustration I could not find a place to pass him safely, so had to be satisfied simply by yelling at him not to slow down when he hesitated on the one technical trial the course offered at the end. I seriously thought about rubbing his wheel, but the bad karma could have been really bad, so just let it go once the lap ended and I handed off to Mike H.

this is just as easy as it looks, unless you are a self-important wussy racer

I ended my first lap in 1:25, and headed back to camp, where i started what would become a routine after each lap. i immediately worked on getting dry and warm, eating some of the pasta\ground beef\veggie mix that would sustain me all weekend, and pounding a quart of gatorade. and ate a Cliff bar . i gave up on trying to calculate how much food i would actually need at any given time – somewhere after 2000 cal for 24 hrs + ???? cal for all the moving around to-and-fro and ?!?!?!??! cal for the ~6 hrs of riding i just decided to inhale a shitload of food, gatorade and fig newtons every time i thought i might have not eaten in a while. I never got hungry, but it messed up my stomach for days as i couldn’t stop eating! but I never bonked, and the first time i didn’t pee clear was after my fourth and final lap. Timely party hats, and the use of an old pair of snowboard pants as camp pants, rounded out my recovery routine. It was too cold to think about showering, and i wound up wearing the same socks the entire day. most importantly to my feeling refreshed, i scrubbed my face, taint and balls, being extra careful to use a separate quadrant of my towel for each lap. I seriously considered throwing the towel in the fire at the end of the race, but it was probably cleaner than some of my riding gear and was quite fluffy. i also slathered on a layer of shammy-butter. It was a lifesaver, by the end of the weekend i innocently scratched my crotch and i almost started screaming it was so sore!

the first lap was muddy, so i had to get my bike cleaned up and lube the drivetrain. It took a while, but I was heartened to see Mike H and JB return from their laps with bikes cleaner than mine. The course was definitely drying out! Landon and Mo, meanwhile, were both pretty much rebuilding their wheels at the campsite – Mo asked me to borrow a brush, and I saw he had his cassette in his hand! . both just managed to make their laps in time. our team decided that Mike H and I would do our 2nd laps, then we would switch to a 3-4-3-4-1-2-1-2 rotation which would give everyone a nice long break.

I strapped on my lights and prepared for my 2nd lap at about 5:45 – sundown!!! It was getting chilly but still pretty nice, and I was psyched when i hit the course, knowing I would get some sweet ambience. i hammered the whole way, and the course was dry but for a few small stretches of mud. in the fading light it got hard to see where the course was soggy, it just suddenly would feel soft and i’d be going half my speed or the forerunner would chirp. the many bumps and whoopdees in the singletrack were getting deeper and deeper with the traffic, but as long as you expected them to be there anytime the color of the ground changed, they were easy to handle and lots of fun. It was slow, but it was a really fun tight course!

I was disappointed to see that my time was just like my first lap, 1:25. Not bad, but clearly I was not the speed demon i hoped to be. I had no right to be upset by this, cause while I have been putting lots of hours in on the bike, my log clearly tells me they have not been the right kind of hours for this event. In the 6 weeks since new years, i’ve done 7.5 hours trailing G, 19.5 hours on the Heckler, 10 hours on the roadie but about 4 of those were spinning slowly on the trainer, and 13.75 hours on the Blur but 5.5 of those were at enduro pace on the Quad Bypass. hardly race training. In the past, i would train for this event by riding Desert Classic to the Helipad, or riding Tortilla Flats. I spent a little while visiting with Dustin and Don from the DNA crew, my Tortilla Flats bunch from a few years back, and they had been training hard on their roadies and single-speeds…they just missed the podium in the SS category which is pretty impressive. what a difference!! this event certainly highlighted the difference between being a racer and an all-mountain rider, and emphasized the rider I’ve become. I really want to mix in a few more hours of speed work, but its just so dull!

i dropped my lights off at the NightRider charging booth on the way back to camp, and had a short visit wtih some of the guys from Adventure who were working the booth. Always nice to see some friends. They asked me for beer, and I intended to bring a few for them my next lap, but that was a long way off and i wound up forgetting. Karma was on my side though as i did manage to bring a nice porter prior to my checking in for my 2nd lap for my friend Yuri, who was volunteering at the exchange booth right next to my checkin station. It was a lift to see a familiar face and get some encouragement before my laps, and its important to let the volunteers know how much they are appreciated. And, Yuri rocks hard.

my consolation for average lap-times would come in endurance and preparation, both of which would come into play for the second half of my race. I quickly got my bike ready for my laps 3 and 4, put on every warm piece of clothing i had, overate, had one porter, and crashed at 10 for about 4 hrs of sleep under 2 thick sleeping bags. Around 12:30 Mike H woke me up to say that Mike R’s leg was hurting and Landon broke his light. umm…ok. We weren’t serious about our finish, and while part of me was bummed my team was flaking and felt compelled to get on the bike, I was already gone down a path for the rest of the night based on our prior plans, with the goals i had set for myself. at this point with our team being casual, that was the measure of success i needed to follow to feel good about my weekend. So i went back to sleep til I had planned on waking at 2, got my shit together, and rode off into the night for lap #3.

I heard it was like 25 degrees at night. I really couldn’t tell, and didn’t care to know. I had brought almost every piece of under-armor i own, along with multiple gloves and socks and tights. Bundling up was not hard, and I was most excited about my inspiration to wear snowboard socks over my riding socks. The wool was terrific, and it covered the small patch of ankle-skin where i would surely freeze. Preparation was key, and i felt pretty good for the whole lap. As usual, the night laps are trippy. It was otherwise mostly uneventful…i turned on my tunes, and hammered as hard as i could, pulling a 1:35. Unfortunately, the official time would not reflect that. The clock starts running on the next rider after the previous rider checks in, so I was charged with the several hours our team was idle. whatever. I got a nice boost from the guy calling times out for approaching riders — as i rolled in at the end of my lap he went “497…with a chili pepper bell…and chili pepper grips…everyone likes chili peppers!” it was a nice touch after spinning in the cold in the dead of night. Mike H was not at the exchange tent to meet me, thought i didn’t really expect him to be, so i made my way back to camp with the intention of changing some clothes and then coming back out for lap #4 as though our team was still on our schedule.

Mike H was asleep in a chair by the fire, and looked quite immovable, and quite comfortable. The dude is funny as shit with the rawest humor i’ve heard in a while, and he is a hoot to be around. good rider, too. and here he was sleeping in a chair…awwww. I worked a little more on my front tire which had been leaky for the last 2 laps, changed some clothes, had some more food, and left again for lap #4 just as he woke up. It was amusing hearing his half-hazy recollection of it later.

When I got down to the staging area, my tire had gotten soft again. So i decided to sacrifice a few minutes and swing by the Fair Wheels Bike tent. They let me use some soapy water to check my bead, pump up again, and confirm that the problem was a puncture and not a bead. It got me ready for the ride, but also made my palms a little moist from the mud on my tires. This would turn out to be the worst part of the weekend. as the lap went on, my fingers got number and number. My legs were also fading, i just felt a little sore and my back was getting tight, and of course i missed the turn onto the 7 Bitches that i’ve managed to miss every other year. It cost me a couple minutes and maybe 3/4ths of a mile, but made the night seem colder and the lap longer. I was definitely struggling, and kept pushing myself to just stay in the middle ring. So far i had been succesful in not using the granny, so the leg strength was there if i could just will myself to do it. Most of the lap was like that — an exercise in will. I knew i could finish, i knew i had 1:15 to go, then an hour, then 45 minutes…i just needed to reach into my confidence and not let the fatigue and cold and numbness in my hands get to me. a year ago, a 4 hour ride was significant; now it is a good day. another hour i can do if i just stay mentally strong, reach into that confidence, be cool honeybunny. The whoopdees were deeper, the course seemed longer, and even the coming of the dawn did little to uplift me. It was nice to see the sunrise, but it was still cold as shit and i was still hauling the weight of my lights. At one point on Junebug trail i noticed a guy had been following me for several miles…i really wanted him to pass, but he really wanted to follow. it is easier to follow than to decide on your own, this i too knew by now. Eventually his slacktitude and its noxious reminder of my own slacktitude in letting him hang around pissed me off enough that i dug deep and dropped him after about 5 minutes of playing tag. Fucker!

nice shot of Christina that ended up in one of the bike magazines.

I felt the finish, finished the climb, bombed the rocky downhill and got the fuck off the course. back to the camp, my hands went into the limbo phase between necrotic and sentient that the hurt enough to make me cry. It was kinda sweet, everyone in camp who was aroused and inspired by my arrival got to see me cry. Then i realized i still had the baton in my pocket. You have this baton, you exchange it in the tent with your team in front of the judge, or leave it at the judge station when you are done. Or in my case, keep it with you so your lap time continues to turn. Why this bothered me when my last 2 laps of 1:35 each counted as 3.5 hr laps…i do not know. And everyone in camp got to see me cry harder, cause as soon as i finished warming my hands in the trailer i rode back to the station and gave them the stupid baton. And passed Mike H heading out, you go bro!

so it was about 8am and i had nothing much to do but get warm, pack up, eat cookies and drink beer. and i finally got to hang out with everyone for a couple hours, pass a bottle of Jack, and other good times. We went over to the rock drop to check out the scene, and engaged in a vigorous game of “pussy, not a pussy.” we are all- mountain pricks. Landon totally did not hear us yelling or see us waving, so he checked out of his lap at 10:50, and we DNF’d…whatever.

i rolled just before noon after realizing if i left RIGHT NOW i would beat the traffic. And what i did not beat i passed on the much improved road back out, and hauled ass home to have G’s 2nd birthday.