Wednesday, September 21, 2011

High Cascades 24 HR Race: 272 Miles of Smiles, and a Win!

Smile for the camera. Dirt taste good.

Originally I wasn't planning on racing the new 24 hour race that Mike Ripley was putting on, but I had a call from a teammate two weeks before the race offering me a free spot on a 4 man team. So without mountain bike racing or riding my mountain bike hard in almost 2 months I quickly said yes.



Winners: 1st place Open 4-man team 17 laps = 272 miles
The 4 man team was compliments of Jake Rosenfeld and his Fry Shack. My teammate Dave Bisers and I, were riding with two other friends of Jake's named Brian Gerow and Jon McCoy. First off I never had even met these two guys but I can tell you they rock. Brian is a legit singlespeeder in mountain and cross, and Jon is killer cat 2 road racer.

So we had our newly formed team (Team Fry Shack). Of course Ninkasi came through and gave us a Keg of Believer Red Ale for the race. Also Collin's Cycle Shop hooked me up with all the pre-race essentials before hand.

Time to race, but who was going to do the first leg of the race? That was quickly decided once we found out that we had to do Lemond Start running 800 meters on a dirt road. I was chosen as I had been on a run a few weeks prior. That made me the only person on the team to go on a run this year. At 11 AM Mike Ripley shot off his starter gun and the fun began.


I rocked the first lap in 95 degree heat in 1 hour and 20 minutes including the run and 16 miles of mountain biking. The other crappy thing about starting the race beside running is that all the riders were bunched up making the Wonaga Trails in Bend super dusty. I came back looking like miner covered head to toe in brown dust and coughing like a pack a day smoker.


We quickly moved up from 15th, to 8th, to 5th, to 4th overall. We were cruising with 3 teams in front of us, but none were in the open 4 man category. This became a even greater challenge as night set in. Also I surprised that many racers wouldn't visit our keg. They were too into the racing for some, but as the night wore on we started getting more visitors.

Brian Gerow being fast and cool

Dave Charging it at Night

Dave Charging during the day

I look tired, this is lap 5 going for 80 miles

The best recovery food for racing is French Fries and beer, cause that stuff kept us rocking all night.  Brian kept the fastest laps through out the day and night with both him and I putting in 1 hour and 15 minutes, Dave did the best job not fading his times in the dark. Jon a veteran roadie who hadn't ridden a mountain bike in years was rocking 1:20 to 1:35. In total we put in 17 laps for 272 miles. That was 5 laps for me for 80 miles, and 4 laps for 64 miles for the other three Fry Shack studs.