Pain Train: 24 Hours Summer Solstice

Well it had rained all night, and the morning of the race, so I was a bit skeptical of race conditions. I packed up early, drove out to a teammates house, packed up into her SUV, and drove up to Albion. In the rain.

During this time she was worried she'd be our slowest rider. I already knew I would be but all in all she ended up being our strongest rider. Not fastest, just able to pound out laps. She did 6. Impressive when other people are crying about how they're cooked after 2 or 3. Kudo's to her for sure. 6 Laps woulda put me in a Coma.

Team

Ryan: Ryan and I had raced at the 8h in Mansfield together. We were pretty decent there despite my injury.

Rob: Rob was our fastest guy. Also running a SS.

Gary: Gary rode a loaner bike from AGOGO bikes, also had some 3500+ lumen lighting system on his bike, he became a crowd favorite on the night laps... you could see him coming from Montreal. Also did a night double.

Jacki:  Jacki was our strongest rider. Doubles, and another lap in the morning. She has some wicked lungs.

Me: I'm a Clyde, I have almost 30lbs over our heaviest rider, and ride SS. I managed to stay within 10M of our fastest rider, and kept my laps consistent. 1:02 fastest, 1:16 slowest evening lap. Lights were terrible.. blrgh. I'll get faster as the weight continues to peel off, but compared to last year, my best time last year, was my worst time this year. It wasn't the same course, but I thought it was much harder with more hills. It was nice to have something to compare it to.


I actually wanted to start off this race, so we flipped a coin with Jacki who also wanted to go first. She won. I chose to take my lap on the second run.

During this time Ryan figured we might qualify for Clyde, we had 2 165lb riders, the rest were 205, 220, and me at 250. We just snuck in at a smidge over 1000lbs.

Now here's the story. The other Clyde team *There were only 2 teams in our category so second place was last place* was actually going to drop out and race in the 200+ age category. The one we were going to race in anyway. Once we moved, they decided to stay in the category. We didn't know there were only 2 entrants, they knew at the time that they were the only ones. We just swapped out thinking there'd be 5-6.

200-249 Cat
Clyde Cat

Even if we raced in 200-249 we would have come in 4th-5th place out of 17 teams. For a ragtag group who's never raced with each other, I'm actually really happy with our performance. I really hope we can race together again next year as I had a really good time with everyone, and we raced well together. Also, seemed like a really good meshing.

At 12pm or so... we realized the other clyde team were in a camp site almost across from us. The smack talk began almost immediately.

Over the course of the night, it was a pretty tough battle, back and forth they'd be up 10, we'd be up 10, they'd be up 3, we'd be up 30 seconds. At the end they were only 2:30 min faster then us.

I'm not going to run down all my laps here, but I'll do my first day lap. Technically all my day laps are the same, except they're progressively slower by 2 min or so. Except the night lap, but I'll bitch about lights after.

The first climb right off the bat was pretty tame until you got into the bush, then it started going up at a pretty good pace. The first sections of single track was a lot of uphill switchbacks that I don't have a lot of practice with. I would power up them but didn't really have a smooth corner in most. I probably exerted myself a lot more in this section then I really needed to. I remember getting out of it the first time and onto some double track heading into Woo Wu and seeing 178bpm. Not where I wanted to be after this part, but I guess standing and climbing isn't going to help me with any form of heart rate control. After Woo Wu there's a good solid speed you can maintain through Sugar Rush and the double track sections. Those sections didn't have much in the way of terrain. This moved into some doubletrack and into Get Groen, the first climb was just steep with roots. I never was able to get through it just on account of people dismounting here. I'd have a good amount of speed and would get up the roots only to have random dismounts or get caught behind someone in granny. Unfortunate, but what can you do.... CROSS RUN IT UP THAT BADBOY WOOOHAAAHH!

The first section above though was wet. And incredibly rooty. I remember my front tire sliding everywhere off some of those roots. It was not that enjoyable of a ride as I haven't really gotten my bikes legs under me yet, even though I've been riding in Durham and such. I just don't get the same terrain. I'll try to ride Albion more. Its just so much more enjoyable and loaded with things that make me have to work hard, and ride right.

After that section there's a nice tempo'd uphill and vista view that I used to pound back my bottle of Gatorade and get my lungs back. This went into Pinecomb Express. Probably my favorite section of the course. Lots of fun things in there, good drops, lots of options, fast flowing single track. The scenery was excellent as well. Just a really solid piece of track, super enjoyable.

Double track, into Albion Witch, and BMBC, that sand climb sucked last year, and sucked this year, just a little less though. SSing I guess has made me stronger, because even with a granny last year I had to walk it. Not so this year, not even once.

Live and Learn was really fast and enjoyable, nothing to note in here.

High Roller had a couple of climbs in there that were in weird spots. The ground before one of the climbs had a bunch of sand there that just bled off any speed I had before the hill. I made it up but it was a good solid spike in my heart rate for sure. The rollers in there were fun but I found myself just riding around them to conserve speed.

Hot August Nights was a fun twisty down. Once you were through that thing it was double track and a sprint to the end.

2 Things

Screw that 5KM sign. Just made things worse.
Much love for the 1KM sign, it made everything better.

I rented some lights there for my night lap. It was terrible. Last year I remember having a really strong lighting system which illuminated everything. This year it was weird. It was a really powerful light but had no real area of lighting at all apart from a 2 meter radius wherever I pointed my head. I didn't get used to leading with it till much later in my ride, but it made the root section almost scary when my tire would just suddenly skirt left or right on me for no reason. Also my night lap was surprisingly silent with only 1 or 2 riders passing me. It was really enjoyable once I got into the groove though. Just wish I had better lighting overall, or found someone with a better lighting system.

Couple of highlights.

1. Someone riding my wheel for like 2/3rds of the course. I asked if he wanted a go around, he said nope. Perfectly fine back here.

2. Lots of people commenting on effort on the SS and to keep it strong.

3. One guy rocking by me but screaming up a hill. Like vocally yelling WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO... CRANK IT SINGLE SPEEDER.

4. Taking some of those hard sections flawlessly and handling the terrain really well.

5. Hand Blisters from wrenching on my handlebars up hills. This is completely new.

That's about it. 4 hours of sleep over the 24 hours, and about 80KM of riding overall.

Will edit the report later. I'm sure there's crap all over here that doesn't make sense, but I'm doin with what I got right now, and right now I don't got any grammar skills :P


..... that was intended.