August 1 2009
The big day finally arrived, when the Jackass Adventure Team would pack up and take its show on the road to the hills of central Pennsylvania for the Wilderness 101 Ultra Endurance Mountain Bike race, 101 miles of dirt road, rutted jeep track, 11,000-plus feet of climbing and 30 miles of narrow, slimy, rocky & sometimes treacherous singletrack thrown in.
The big day finally arrived, when the Jackass Adventure Team would pack up and take its show on the road to the hills of central Pennsylvania for the Wilderness 101 Ultra Endurance Mountain Bike race, 101 miles of dirt road, rutted jeep track, 11,000-plus feet of climbing and 30 miles of narrow, slimy, rocky & sometimes treacherous singletrack thrown in.
Mike, Per, Chuck and I met at Mike's house to load up the Sequoia, easily fitting everything into the beast with the 4 Niners on the back, my Thule roof coffin on the top and some gear in the rear. We blew out of Westport in the pouring rain at 10:15am with the hopes of getting a good camping spot next to the river at the Coburn town park where the race starts & finishes. Since Coburn is out in Amish country in the middle of Pennsylvania, nearly all the 350 racers at the Wilderness 101 end up camping overnight there. Its a very good time - show up the night before, camp out, do the race, then camp out again to enjoy the post-race barbeque and kegs of pretty darn good local beer from the Elk Creek brewery in Mannheim (one town over.) Wake up Sunday to pack up & go home.
We made decent time in the pouring rain although we were all scared that the course was going to be a bloodbath (or mud bath) after the soaking it was getting all day on Friday. After a quick sandwich at a highway stop & rob (or bodega as chuck would call it) we rolled into Coburn at about 3pm. Timmy & Tom had gotten there about 20 minutes before us and grabbed a nice spot by the river with enough room for our big tent. Camp jackass was erected and we spent the rest of our evening getting our bikes & gear in order and just relaxing. Good times.
After a fitful night of sleeping due to some punk singlespeeders who love to get stoned & drunk the night before a 100-mile race, we were awakened at 5:20am by the spooky yet awesome sound of a gong, which the race organizer also lets each rider ring when they cross the finish line. Up and at ‘em, I ate a small bag of granola cereal and pounded some water and a big ol’ coffee from the pavilion before getting my gear on and filling up my bottles etc. Had some pre-race nerves (which I rarely get anymore and absolutely LOVE to get) as we got ready to roll out on a cool misty morning with the whole 350 riders at 7am.
The motos revved up and before you know it we were off, a controlled 15mph neutral start for the first mile through town before the motos peel off at the bottom of the first climb, a 2000-foot climb over 6 miles on very good cinder/dirt roads. I started in the 4th or 5th row and needed to pick my way up a bit early in the climb but finally found a group that was going my pace, essential in this race since much of the first 40 miles are on roads and you can get a bit of a free ride if you're in a group. After the first climb, which is done on pure adrenaline and not difficult at all, the road turns down and we're rewarded with a bombing 40-mph descent on the same type of roads. The course remains like this, up-down up-down all the way to aid station #1, where I took a water bottle hand-up without stopping. Shortly after Aid #1 we dove into the woods for the first singletrack, this one very tight & narrow but fairly flowy, with a cooking 25mph descent where the track is literally one tire width wide, with tall grass on either side. All I could do was lightly grip the bars and let the bike follow the track, as the front wheel was glued to this little rut of mud and I was absolutely flying. After a quick pop out onto a road, we dove back in to visit the three bridges trail, where I desperately wanted to clean the three little slimy bridges that are connected by little islands of wet muddy roots. Well I made the first bridge then the guy ahead of me dismounted at the second bridge and my concentration went out the window. I dabbed and did a quick triathlete dismount and ran over the remaining two bridges to get going again. The rock garden thereafter was covered with people so I sprinted through it with my bike in hand to get goign with the faster guys at the front.
Aid #2 came quickly; I grabbed my second bottle of Perpetuem, filled the Camelbak with water and took off onto the beginning of the two biggest climbs of the race, Greenlee Rd and Seeger Rd. Greenlee is a 1300-foot climb over 4 miles, I middle-ringed it and it went by pretty quick. I felt good with my hr around 151 bpm, I was dropping people left and right on climbs throughout the day and felt like I could climb at that intensity indefinitely. After Greenlee was the descent of the Croyle Trail, a very steep, very rocky and very tight downhill that left my forearms & triceps aching from the effort. I had a couple guys blow by me but I was ok with it, my plan was to go conservative on the technical descents so I could avoid the nearly catastrophic fall I had last year.
After surviving Croyle, we popped out onto a fire road again to climb Seeger Rd, an 1100-foot climb over 3-miles, a bit steeper than Greenlee and potentially harder if one was to have gone out too hard to this point. At one point I was in a paceline with two singlespeeders and a geared guy. The geared guy downshifter and popped his chain in half. The two singlespeeders took off around him, I slowed to ask if he had everything he needed and of course he didn’t have a multi-tool (how to jump into a 100-mile mountain bike race without a multi-tool??) Murphy ’s Law got this guy. I gave him my tool and told him to catch me, karma was on my side but if I had a mechanical he needed to catch me quick so i could fix it. Well I never needed it, and he never caught me... but he did find me at the finish and return the tool.
So anyway, we were climbing Seeger Rd and I was again feeling good and caught up to & passed a woman who was marathon national champion last year (she'd finish 3rd overall woman on the day.) She hopped on my wheel and followed me up the rest of the climb, I stopped at the top to water the ferns and she kept going. I would never see her again as she finished in 8:47 I think.
Down off of Seeger was the Telephone trail & Spencer trail, I don’t remember much of this section but its downhill & twisty I think with a short road climb thrown in there a bit, and popped us out onto the road to Aid station 3. Aid 3 I took another bottle of perpetuem, refilled on water and got going fast. I was excited to tackle the only real singletrack climb of the race, Sassafras Trail. I ended up cleaning the climb, with lots and lots of guys walking up this 4-mile, 1000-foot climb on a pretty rough, rock-strewn piece of singletrack. I kept my hr up in the high 150s and nailed it, I was so proud of myself for that one. On the other side was the much-feared descent that nearly ruined my race last year, as we get to descend the full 1000 feet in the short span of less than 2 miles. Part of the downhill is an 18-inch wide dirt rut cut into the side of a hill, with a 60-degree drop on the right - No run-outs, no place to stop & cool down the brakes, just a straight down bombing descent.
Last year my left hand cramped OPEN when I tried to stretch it in this section, and the span of 3 seconds that it took me to close my cramped hand had me going 30mph quickly and the carnage ensued. I supermanned off my bike, did a dive-roll downhill and landed on my back, with my bike landing on top of my left leg. A bad scene but i was able to continue, albeit at a shaken & slower pace. This year was a different story, i knew what to expect and I had no issues, descended it clean and got another confidence boost from defeating the demon downhill that had haunted my cycling nightmares for the past year.
After Sassafras, we popped out onto a road quickly then back into the Beautiful Trail, which is, well, beautiful. It reminds me of Trout Brook in Easton, lots of little steep rocky knolls with mountain laurel and narrow trails. I had a great ride through here as well but was starting to get hot. I felt like I was drinking & fueling correctly though and energy was great. With my concentration working, I cleaned a bunch of tough sections and even passed 1 or 2 guys here.
Aid #4 came up at mile 74, I got another Perp bottle, pounded 2 shots of Coke and got a cold towel with ice water to douse my head & arms. I probably took 5 minutes here, which in retrospect is longer than I should have taken, but I was very hot and didn’t quite see the signs that the wheels might be falling off a bit. I should have grabbed Gatorade and extra water, but hindsight is 20/20. I headed out into one of the toughest climbs of the day up Stillhouse Hollow, an 800-foot climb on eroded jeep track with southern exposure (read hot.) I walked a little bit of this last year and had no intention of doing so again, so I locked in my heart rate at 150 and got a good rhythm going. I made it up in good time without stopping or dabbing, hit the ripping 25mph descent then up another climb to Sand Mountain state park. Sand mountain reminds me a bit of the lower elevations at Lake Tahoe, sandy & rocky terrain with juniper ground cover and evergreen trees above, an easy trail but given the sandy ground it sapped the energy a bit. They also added in some short but steep & loose rollers that weren’t there last year. These were very hard little climbs that spiked the heart rate. This section was fairly exposed and hot, and it was at this stage that I realized the with the combination of the heat & effort, I wasn’t digesting the mix of perpetuem/hammer gel/endurolytes that was in my stomach. I could taste the Perp, I wasn’t sweating and I was having trouble getting my heart rate up, all classic signs of a little dehydration. So I went straight to the h20 until it sorted itself out, but this was a tough 2.5 hours between 4 & 5 where I probably lost a good 30 minutes off my race.
By the time I got to Aid #5 the water had begun to work, I was beginning to sweat again and my energy was coming back. And thank goodness the aid station came because I was out of water. I pounded 4 cups of Gatorade and got a full bottle of the same, and saw that the race time was 8:07 and I had 12 miles to go. Knowing there were some rail bed, a couple tech sections and only one big climb remaining, I tore off on a mission to break 9 hours. I put my fitness to good use here, rolling upwards of 25mph on the rail beds on the way to the climb, a 750-foot climb over 3 miles that isn’t so bad except that we'd been riding already for over 8 hours at that point. Prior to hitting the climb I once again got stung by a yellow jacket (this is three times in the last year while riding my mountain bike!) Little suckers must like me. Nevertheless I had started sweating again, which means that my nutrition issues were solved, and my body was all of the sudden screaming at me "GO."
When I got to the start of the hill, I kept it in the big ring and stood up on the pedals to keep up my momentum. Once I dropped into the middle ring I did not let up, climbing in the middle of the rear cluster (32x19 maybe) and just blowing up this hill, alternating standing for 30 seconds and sitting for 30 seconds to keep on top of the bigger gear. Last year this hill seemed to go on forever and I got demoralized that around every corner it seemed to keep kicking up. This year as I passed one guy, then another, and another, I was begging for the hill to be longer. I was foaming at the mouth, screaming at the trail to give me more, make it steeper, make it last longer. Those 10-15 minutes of climbing might be my best moments ever on a bicycle, not only in terms of the power & energy I was able to put out, but the emotion I felt while doing it. So many thoughts blurred through my mind in the delirium of 165+ bpm, thinking about finish lines, imagining crowds on the side of the road, not even trying to fight off the tears as imagined my kids yelling at me "go daddy." I was completely alone out there on that mountain but it held all the excitement and emotion for me of a Mont Ventoux lined with a million people on the 20th stage of the Tour de France.
I bombed the descent, put my running skills to work through fisherman's path, a nearly unrideable piece of riverside trail that is just a jumble of rocks & roots on the edge of the river. Then I was out onto the rail bed again passing more people, through a pitch-black railroad tunnel that is the signature of the race, and pretty soon out onto paved road for a final mile. It is a sweet feeling to smell hamburgers and to see the pavilion across the river when you come into town. Down around a corner, over the metal bridge and into the town park, applause & cheers came from the crowd as I rolled in to ring the gong. 9:08:57. I didn’t make it under nine hours but I was very happy with the end result. 24 minutes faster than last year and I didn’t have a perfect race. Most of the people i was riding with up to Aid #4 finished in the 8:30-8:40 range, including the #2 and #3 women. The fact that I feel great post-race tells me that I didn’t dig deep into the well during the race. I felt great even that evening, whereas I couldn’t even bend over to take off my bike shoes last year.
I grabbed a Gatorade and went and sat in the ice cold stream for a few minutes to wash off and cool down, worked like a charm. Then I went back to the finish to get some food and sit down. Tom rolled in while I was in the river with a killer time of 10:08, he looked fresh as a daisy and had a great day. Per rolled in at 10:30, a whopping two hours better than last year! I was jumping up & down like an idiot as he came around from the finish shoot. He had a stellar day and a big old grin to match it. Tim finished shortly after in 10:40, almost an hour better than last year though I missed his finish since I was on the massage table.
Tim told us that Mike fell hard after three bridges and broke his handlebar, but last he saw him he was RIDING with half a handlebar! We didn’t know what to think, but given the terrible year Mike was having we all hoped he was ok. Well soon enough, at 11:40, in rolled the Big Dogg! We were all jumping up & down, screaming our heads off and pretty soon crying our eyes out as the big man came in and gave us all high fives and hugs. He had taken the bar in his lower abdomen and had a cut & huge bruise, but was able to get a spare handlebar from neutral support at Aid #2 and finished the race with a bag of ice in his pants. This race threw absolutely everything at Mike and he put every bit of heart & soul into finishing it, injured body, broken bike & all. With that performance, Mike became the unofficial champion of everything and won the much-coveted Fight Club sweatshirt. He may have even retired the trophy.
Chucky O'Donnell, the Zen master who was racing W101 for the first time, came in about 12:30 and looked like he had just gone out around the block. He wasn’t even sweating. We were all hootin and hollering and he almost didn't even bother to cross the finish line. He just rode nonchalantly over to us and said "hey guys, I just had a really nice day on the bike." Chuck Lover, true to form.
We had a great time that evening, reminiscing about the race around camp, talking with other riders that would walk by, eating burgers & baked beans and drinking a few beers. We talked about the fact that we’d probably pass on next year (the race is SO hard that you'd probably sell your bike for $10 at the finish line) - but eventually we all agreed to not decide about next year until a few months down the road. I'm already thinking about where I can make up time to break 8:30.
We made decent time in the pouring rain although we were all scared that the course was going to be a bloodbath (or mud bath) after the soaking it was getting all day on Friday. After a quick sandwich at a highway stop & rob (or bodega as chuck would call it) we rolled into Coburn at about 3pm. Timmy & Tom had gotten there about 20 minutes before us and grabbed a nice spot by the river with enough room for our big tent. Camp jackass was erected and we spent the rest of our evening getting our bikes & gear in order and just relaxing. Good times.
After a fitful night of sleeping due to some punk singlespeeders who love to get stoned & drunk the night before a 100-mile race, we were awakened at 5:20am by the spooky yet awesome sound of a gong, which the race organizer also lets each rider ring when they cross the finish line. Up and at ‘em, I ate a small bag of granola cereal and pounded some water and a big ol’ coffee from the pavilion before getting my gear on and filling up my bottles etc. Had some pre-race nerves (which I rarely get anymore and absolutely LOVE to get) as we got ready to roll out on a cool misty morning with the whole 350 riders at 7am.
The motos revved up and before you know it we were off, a controlled 15mph neutral start for the first mile through town before the motos peel off at the bottom of the first climb, a 2000-foot climb over 6 miles on very good cinder/dirt roads. I started in the 4th or 5th row and needed to pick my way up a bit early in the climb but finally found a group that was going my pace, essential in this race since much of the first 40 miles are on roads and you can get a bit of a free ride if you're in a group. After the first climb, which is done on pure adrenaline and not difficult at all, the road turns down and we're rewarded with a bombing 40-mph descent on the same type of roads. The course remains like this, up-down up-down all the way to aid station #1, where I took a water bottle hand-up without stopping. Shortly after Aid #1 we dove into the woods for the first singletrack, this one very tight & narrow but fairly flowy, with a cooking 25mph descent where the track is literally one tire width wide, with tall grass on either side. All I could do was lightly grip the bars and let the bike follow the track, as the front wheel was glued to this little rut of mud and I was absolutely flying. After a quick pop out onto a road, we dove back in to visit the three bridges trail, where I desperately wanted to clean the three little slimy bridges that are connected by little islands of wet muddy roots. Well I made the first bridge then the guy ahead of me dismounted at the second bridge and my concentration went out the window. I dabbed and did a quick triathlete dismount and ran over the remaining two bridges to get going again. The rock garden thereafter was covered with people so I sprinted through it with my bike in hand to get goign with the faster guys at the front.
Aid #2 came quickly; I grabbed my second bottle of Perpetuem, filled the Camelbak with water and took off onto the beginning of the two biggest climbs of the race, Greenlee Rd and Seeger Rd. Greenlee is a 1300-foot climb over 4 miles, I middle-ringed it and it went by pretty quick. I felt good with my hr around 151 bpm, I was dropping people left and right on climbs throughout the day and felt like I could climb at that intensity indefinitely. After Greenlee was the descent of the Croyle Trail, a very steep, very rocky and very tight downhill that left my forearms & triceps aching from the effort. I had a couple guys blow by me but I was ok with it, my plan was to go conservative on the technical descents so I could avoid the nearly catastrophic fall I had last year.
After surviving Croyle, we popped out onto a fire road again to climb Seeger Rd, an 1100-foot climb over 3-miles, a bit steeper than Greenlee and potentially harder if one was to have gone out too hard to this point. At one point I was in a paceline with two singlespeeders and a geared guy. The geared guy downshifter and popped his chain in half. The two singlespeeders took off around him, I slowed to ask if he had everything he needed and of course he didn’t have a multi-tool (how to jump into a 100-mile mountain bike race without a multi-tool??) Murphy ’s Law got this guy. I gave him my tool and told him to catch me, karma was on my side but if I had a mechanical he needed to catch me quick so i could fix it. Well I never needed it, and he never caught me... but he did find me at the finish and return the tool.
So anyway, we were climbing Seeger Rd and I was again feeling good and caught up to & passed a woman who was marathon national champion last year (she'd finish 3rd overall woman on the day.) She hopped on my wheel and followed me up the rest of the climb, I stopped at the top to water the ferns and she kept going. I would never see her again as she finished in 8:47 I think.
Down off of Seeger was the Telephone trail & Spencer trail, I don’t remember much of this section but its downhill & twisty I think with a short road climb thrown in there a bit, and popped us out onto the road to Aid station 3. Aid 3 I took another bottle of perpetuem, refilled on water and got going fast. I was excited to tackle the only real singletrack climb of the race, Sassafras Trail. I ended up cleaning the climb, with lots and lots of guys walking up this 4-mile, 1000-foot climb on a pretty rough, rock-strewn piece of singletrack. I kept my hr up in the high 150s and nailed it, I was so proud of myself for that one. On the other side was the much-feared descent that nearly ruined my race last year, as we get to descend the full 1000 feet in the short span of less than 2 miles. Part of the downhill is an 18-inch wide dirt rut cut into the side of a hill, with a 60-degree drop on the right - No run-outs, no place to stop & cool down the brakes, just a straight down bombing descent.Last year my left hand cramped OPEN when I tried to stretch it in this section, and the span of 3 seconds that it took me to close my cramped hand had me going 30mph quickly and the carnage ensued. I supermanned off my bike, did a dive-roll downhill and landed on my back, with my bike landing on top of my left leg. A bad scene but i was able to continue, albeit at a shaken & slower pace. This year was a different story, i knew what to expect and I had no issues, descended it clean and got another confidence boost from defeating the demon downhill that had haunted my cycling nightmares for the past year.
After Sassafras, we popped out onto a road quickly then back into the Beautiful Trail, which is, well, beautiful. It reminds me of Trout Brook in Easton, lots of little steep rocky knolls with mountain laurel and narrow trails. I had a great ride through here as well but was starting to get hot. I felt like I was drinking & fueling correctly though and energy was great. With my concentration working, I cleaned a bunch of tough sections and even passed 1 or 2 guys here.Aid #4 came up at mile 74, I got another Perp bottle, pounded 2 shots of Coke and got a cold towel with ice water to douse my head & arms. I probably took 5 minutes here, which in retrospect is longer than I should have taken, but I was very hot and didn’t quite see the signs that the wheels might be falling off a bit. I should have grabbed Gatorade and extra water, but hindsight is 20/20. I headed out into one of the toughest climbs of the day up Stillhouse Hollow, an 800-foot climb on eroded jeep track with southern exposure (read hot.) I walked a little bit of this last year and had no intention of doing so again, so I locked in my heart rate at 150 and got a good rhythm going. I made it up in good time without stopping or dabbing, hit the ripping 25mph descent then up another climb to Sand Mountain state park. Sand mountain reminds me a bit of the lower elevations at Lake Tahoe, sandy & rocky terrain with juniper ground cover and evergreen trees above, an easy trail but given the sandy ground it sapped the energy a bit. They also added in some short but steep & loose rollers that weren’t there last year. These were very hard little climbs that spiked the heart rate. This section was fairly exposed and hot, and it was at this stage that I realized the with the combination of the heat & effort, I wasn’t digesting the mix of perpetuem/hammer gel/endurolytes that was in my stomach. I could taste the Perp, I wasn’t sweating and I was having trouble getting my heart rate up, all classic signs of a little dehydration. So I went straight to the h20 until it sorted itself out, but this was a tough 2.5 hours between 4 & 5 where I probably lost a good 30 minutes off my race.
By the time I got to Aid #5 the water had begun to work, I was beginning to sweat again and my energy was coming back. And thank goodness the aid station came because I was out of water. I pounded 4 cups of Gatorade and got a full bottle of the same, and saw that the race time was 8:07 and I had 12 miles to go. Knowing there were some rail bed, a couple tech sections and only one big climb remaining, I tore off on a mission to break 9 hours. I put my fitness to good use here, rolling upwards of 25mph on the rail beds on the way to the climb, a 750-foot climb over 3 miles that isn’t so bad except that we'd been riding already for over 8 hours at that point. Prior to hitting the climb I once again got stung by a yellow jacket (this is three times in the last year while riding my mountain bike!) Little suckers must like me. Nevertheless I had started sweating again, which means that my nutrition issues were solved, and my body was all of the sudden screaming at me "GO."
When I got to the start of the hill, I kept it in the big ring and stood up on the pedals to keep up my momentum. Once I dropped into the middle ring I did not let up, climbing in the middle of the rear cluster (32x19 maybe) and just blowing up this hill, alternating standing for 30 seconds and sitting for 30 seconds to keep on top of the bigger gear. Last year this hill seemed to go on forever and I got demoralized that around every corner it seemed to keep kicking up. This year as I passed one guy, then another, and another, I was begging for the hill to be longer. I was foaming at the mouth, screaming at the trail to give me more, make it steeper, make it last longer. Those 10-15 minutes of climbing might be my best moments ever on a bicycle, not only in terms of the power & energy I was able to put out, but the emotion I felt while doing it. So many thoughts blurred through my mind in the delirium of 165+ bpm, thinking about finish lines, imagining crowds on the side of the road, not even trying to fight off the tears as imagined my kids yelling at me "go daddy." I was completely alone out there on that mountain but it held all the excitement and emotion for me of a Mont Ventoux lined with a million people on the 20th stage of the Tour de France.
I bombed the descent, put my running skills to work through fisherman's path, a nearly unrideable piece of riverside trail that is just a jumble of rocks & roots on the edge of the river. Then I was out onto the rail bed again passing more people, through a pitch-black railroad tunnel that is the signature of the race, and pretty soon out onto paved road for a final mile. It is a sweet feeling to smell hamburgers and to see the pavilion across the river when you come into town. Down around a corner, over the metal bridge and into the town park, applause & cheers came from the crowd as I rolled in to ring the gong. 9:08:57. I didn’t make it under nine hours but I was very happy with the end result. 24 minutes faster than last year and I didn’t have a perfect race. Most of the people i was riding with up to Aid #4 finished in the 8:30-8:40 range, including the #2 and #3 women. The fact that I feel great post-race tells me that I didn’t dig deep into the well during the race. I felt great even that evening, whereas I couldn’t even bend over to take off my bike shoes last year.I grabbed a Gatorade and went and sat in the ice cold stream for a few minutes to wash off and cool down, worked like a charm. Then I went back to the finish to get some food and sit down. Tom rolled in while I was in the river with a killer time of 10:08, he looked fresh as a daisy and had a great day. Per rolled in at 10:30, a whopping two hours better than last year! I was jumping up & down like an idiot as he came around from the finish shoot. He had a stellar day and a big old grin to match it. Tim finished shortly after in 10:40, almost an hour better than last year though I missed his finish since I was on the massage table.
Tim told us that Mike fell hard after three bridges and broke his handlebar, but last he saw him he was RIDING with half a handlebar! We didn’t know what to think, but given the terrible year Mike was having we all hoped he was ok. Well soon enough, at 11:40, in rolled the Big Dogg! We were all jumping up & down, screaming our heads off and pretty soon crying our eyes out as the big man came in and gave us all high fives and hugs. He had taken the bar in his lower abdomen and had a cut & huge bruise, but was able to get a spare handlebar from neutral support at Aid #2 and finished the race with a bag of ice in his pants. This race threw absolutely everything at Mike and he put every bit of heart & soul into finishing it, injured body, broken bike & all. With that performance, Mike became the unofficial champion of everything and won the much-coveted Fight Club sweatshirt. He may have even retired the trophy.
Chucky O'Donnell, the Zen master who was racing W101 for the first time, came in about 12:30 and looked like he had just gone out around the block. He wasn’t even sweating. We were all hootin and hollering and he almost didn't even bother to cross the finish line. He just rode nonchalantly over to us and said "hey guys, I just had a really nice day on the bike." Chuck Lover, true to form.
We had a great time that evening, reminiscing about the race around camp, talking with other riders that would walk by, eating burgers & baked beans and drinking a few beers. We talked about the fact that we’d probably pass on next year (the race is SO hard that you'd probably sell your bike for $10 at the finish line) - but eventually we all agreed to not decide about next year until a few months down the road. I'm already thinking about where I can make up time to break 8:30.
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