Rebecca Rusch\'s 24 Hours of Moab Race Recap

Rebecca Rusch Photos by Team KETCHUM if You Can / 04.11.2005

Oct 15-16 weekend, I gathered a group of female friends and training partners and we headed down to Moab for the 24 Hours of Moab as a women\'s expert relay team for the race.  The team, \"KETCHUM If You Can\", consisted of me, my training partner/coach Muffy Ritz, my physical therapist and ex-alpine ski racer Karoline Droege, and adventure racing friend Anna Keeling.  All of us are from Ketchum ID, with the exception of Anna.  Muffy had raced 24 Hrs of Moab in the 90\'s, but other than that, we were all rookies to this race and relative rookies to MTB racing.

The format of the race consisted of a 14 mile technical MTB loop that we all did in a relay format, handing a baton off after each leg.  We debated over team order and basically decided Anna would do the first leg because she\'s a really aggressive rider who\'s not afraid to share the trail with 4,000 other riders.  Each lap took us between 1:17 and about 1:30, so that meant we\'d each go all out as fast as we could for our lap, then have about 4.5 hours to sit around and cheer for the rest of the team.  For me, it was really wild to be on a team, but also be racing my laps alone.  It was a great combination of the team camraderie, but also a solo effort pushing as hard as I could for each of my laps.

We went to the race just for a fun weekend with the girls and with no expectations about how we would finish.  Granted, we are all competitive athletes in other sports, so I knew everyone on the team would put the hammer down, I just had no idea how we would fare against the other women\'s expert teams.