May 25th Round and Round Spokane
As with every endurance race it started off with lots of waiting around and unsettled nerves. There was no shade to be found in our pit area and it was the hottest day we had seen since last summer. People were trying everything to get out of the sun as we all knew that once the gun went off at noon there would be no hiding from the heat.
12:00 and the gun went off. Being in the states they use a real gun, just with blanks, one of the loudest things I have ever had the misfortune of being less than 5 feet away from. And we’re off and running. Hundreds of racers all running up a single track trail and back down the other side. All the spectators chearing us on. After a quick ½ mile run, the game is to find your bike and get on with the race as quickly as possible.
The first lap is always very busy and congested. Grace got off to a blistering fast start and got ahead of most of the people that could not ride the technical sections. I however got stuck behind a lot of them and therefore had to walk some of the sections I would never of dreamed of having to walk.
Very quickly I realized that the heat was going to be a problem. As I got going fast through some of the single track the sweat blowing out of my helmet felt like somebody was shooting me with a water pistol. Grace and I were each carrying about 1 litre of my home made electrolyte drink per lap and 3 energy balls each.
Grace and I played cat and mouse for the first 3 laps usually I would get into the pits and see Colin for a refuel of drink and food just as Grace was getting ready to leave. On our fourth lap I started having stomach issues. This seems to always be a problem for me. By the end of the fourth lap I had figured it out and fixed my issues, the sun was also going away which helped as it was now not as hot and I no longer felt like a pizza in a brick oven.
As the sun set and Grace and I were able to settle into the idea of 8 hours of mountain biking with artificial light, a tunnel vision of rocks and dirt. This 24 hour course is a non technical mountain bike course which is nice for the night as night riding makes everything that much more technical. By the time we did our second night lap I knew every bump and every rock. I began to feel I could ride this course with my lights out but that might have just been the heat stroke talking.
Ashlea showed up at our pits at the perfect time with our Pizza. Grace and I came in to find warm pizza and coke waiting for us. I pounded down a slice of pepperoni pizza and a can of coke and headed back out onto the course dreaming of finishing this next lap so that I could have more pizza and pop. This became one of my mental games to keep me going. If I finish a lap I am allowed 1 slice of pizza and pop.
6 am and 18 hours done, Grace and I can now remove our lights and head into the final stretch. We had 10 laps done and were on pace to finish with 13 or 14 laps. I had expected the sun to come up and start heating our cold and beaten bodies. And that is where mother nature threw us a curve ball. The sun did rise however it did not bring any heat. We sent Colin over to the espresso shack to get us both a mocha to try and heat us up from the inside out. We were wearing a lot of warm cloths but the body just wasn’t able to shake the cold. I realized as I was drinking my mocha that one of my eyes was shut and I could not get it to open. My other eye was barely open. I decided without saying anything to Grace or Colin that my best bet was to sleep for a little while until it warmed up. I rolled out of my chair and went to sleep with my face down in some cloths on a tarp. 45 minutes later I woke up and saw Grace had followed my lead and was sleeping on the ground also.
Grace and I decided we may as well go out and get at least one more lap finished. Grace went out in a blistering pace but decided to ride the last lap with Phil so she waited for Phil to catch up. It didn’t matter what time we finished the lap as we were not allowed to cross the line until noon. We rolled into our pit area 50 feet from the finish line at about 11:15am and decided that was enough pain and suffering for one day. We hung out and waited the forty-five minutes for the finishing gun to go off. We crossed the line with many other racers who were all waiting for the gun to go off. It was a very anti climatic finish to an odd race. We usually go full boar to the end however this race just did not for some unknown reason create that urgency and excitement for us this year. This may have been due to our 6am nap, which we don’t normally take when doing a 24 hour race.
All in all it was a good race and a great way to start off the season of mountain biking with a 5th place for Grace and 13th place for Phil. It reminded us that we are not invincible and that we need to do a whole lot of training in the heat so that we are ready for Intermontaine in July in Kamloops.
Thanks for reading and here are some of the pictures from our race.