The Good, The Bad, The Not so Pretty

These guys asked me to race the 12 Hours of Pando with them. Why, you would have to ask them, I'm not sure either. I agreed, thinking, I can race 100 mile races, shouldn't be a big deal. I should have done a little more research before nodding my head. Maybe I was falling asleep and that was why my head was nodding?

Race day arrives and I had arranged to pick up Nate and his wife Meaghan on my way to the race. I woke up at 5:30 and got myself moving out the door in a timely fashion. Picked them up and off we went. Meaghan has been at these races before and would be referred to as our "pit bitch" shortly after the pit area was set up and functional. It turns out to be a self-inflicted moniker and done in good fun - they are a fun group to hang with!

Pando is a small ski resort near Grand Rapids. Certainly not as intimidating as Breckenridge, the last ski resort I raced at. I did a quick pre ride with Andy and realized that indeed, they were 4.5 mile laps, and they would be done at a high rate of speed. The loop starts with a sprint up the 'front' slope of the ski hill and immediately turns 180 degrees to come right back down along the tow rope line. Then it heads around the back on some two track, throw in some reasonably fun singletrack, a climb and descent on another ski slope and you pretty much have the circuit.

Here is what the start line looked like:


Somewhere near the middle of that group is Andy Brown - our lead off rider. His goal was to get the hole shot. He got it in front of Dan Jansen. Here is Andy on the downhill followed by Dan:




Once the race was on, we started with doing two laps each. The batting order was Andy, Nate, Eddie, then me in the anchor (I feared the worst). I realized somewhere along the way that the basic strategy was kind of like a cx race. Basically go to red line and pin it there for the entire lap/s. I was not prepared for that mentally. I have been training to ride all day, not sprint for short periods of time with rests in between. Off we go!

My first two lap times were pretty good. My goal for the day was to remain consistent with my times and not be a total load. We then switched to a one lap rotation. this meant riding for approximately 20 minutes, and then resting for 60. As the day progressed, we settled into a battle with a west coast team that was nip and tuck all along. My times were pretty solid, creeping up when night and rain rolled in. It got kind of unpleasant, 55 degrees and rain combined with dark are not the best conditions for anything, especially mtb racing. We survived. There was controversy on my last lap with the other team. They had a mechanical and had to cut the course to fix, thus aborting their lap, and having to start that lap over again. This erased the 10 minute deficit we had at that moment and put us back in the lead. Unfortunately, the official lap counters somehow screwed this up. At the end of the day, in the words of the promoter, "maybe got 2nd and the other team maybe got first". Not so pretty!!

All in all, the race was a lot of fun. I am hoping it was a good start to getting ready for cx season. It kind of felt like doing mini cx races for 12 hours. The ride home was TOUGH! We left Pando at around 1:30 and I got home at 5. Thank goodness Nate was willing to drive, still not sure what was in the chocolate chip muffins. I am now up to 3 hours of sleep and looking forward to my second nap of the day.