LBL 24hrs 2011

Rock Racing / 28.04.2011

24 hours, thatâ€™s all it was to be, heck Chuck and I have done longer races than that and in what at the time seemed like much more treacherous territory then the Midwest could ever be. Let me just tell you, the Midwest is no place sissies.

We arrived at the pre-race meeting with speculation as to the race start time and where we would start from, but like every other speculation we have ever had about adventure racing, this one was just as wrong. We even tried to trick Jason into telling us the start time before the meeting, but Jason is sharp, he just laughs and says I guess you will find out at the meeting. We were kind of hoping for a 7 am start, but were sure it was going to be a 12 am start. So when Jason said the meeting would start at 12 am and that we had 40 points to plot, everyone groaned. Lucky for us he then said â€œApril Fools!â€, we thought it was a gift from God when he said the real start time would be 7am. We thought everything was going our way, ha ha, now that was a completely goofy thought. We were given our maps and some instructions and sent on our way.

Back at the hotel we plotted the points and realized just how long the mileage could be on all of the legs, but we were pretty confident that it would be no problem for us. I mean we were nervous, but still confident. I guess our confidence has been a real laugh, now that it is over. So off to bed it was, I woke up every 45 minutes worrying that I was going to miss the alarm. 5:30 am came and I loaded my gear into the Adventure van and was happy about the warm temperatures outside. Boy, was that a mistake, I would have liked it to be about 10 degrees cooler as the day went on.

We lined up at the starting line, which was after what seemed to be 10 trips to the bathroom. 12 hours racers in front, 24 hour racers in back, then with 15 seconds to the start Jason says, 24 hour racers, you donâ€™t have to carry your packs for the first leg, but you do need your cell phone. On one hand I was relieved that I wouldnâ€™t have what felt like 30 pounds on my back for the first four checkpoints, on the other hand, we had to scramble to get our packs off and grab our maps before the race started. Luckily our new Osprey packs are easy to organize and Chuck had the cell phone out in a flash. This was just another of Jasonâ€™s little surprises. He likes to surprise the racers every once in a while to keep us on our toes.

We took off and all was going well, we ran the entire first leg and went directly to all of the checkpoints. At CP3 we had two choices, walk across a very long log over the lake or run a long way around the lake, we chose to cross the log. I really think Chuck wants to see me swim in these events, but lucky for him I made it across without falling into the lake. CP4 was the transition, so we headed back up a long steep hill to grab our packs and our bikes.

CP5 through CP11 were bike points and they were all on single track. If you have never been to LBL, they have some of the best single track around. We were moving through this section, hitting short steep climbs and rolling over lots of roots and logs. This part made me think about Castlewood, there is a section at Castlewood that has a short steep climb and just before the top there is a tree root and some rocks and no mater how hard I try and can never ride through it without getting off my bike. I have even tried to go up and down the hill trying to make it through, but I have never been able to do it. So now we are hitting sections that are 10 times as hard as the section at Castlewood and we are riding through every one of them. I just canâ€™t figure out why that section of Castlewood beats me every time. Sorry about the digression, back to the race. We quickly picked up CP 5-8 and then we rode and rode trying to get to nine. On the way we passed a team that was having mechanical problems, their chain had broke for the 3rd time and they didnâ€™t have a master link to fix it this time. We didnâ€™t have one or we would have given it to them. They were really tough though, they were running pushing the bike and hopping on during down hills and coasting. Get this, they were keeping up with us! Somehow we were discussing the chain issue and rode right by CP9. We rode for about 5 minutes and realized we had gone too far, so we turned around and rode back, only to see the bike pushing team at the CP. I donâ€™t know the teamâ€™s real name, but I would really like to know if they got the chain fixed and finished the race, they really deserved a shot at finishing after that, most teams would have just dropped after the 3rd break in the chain.