24 Hours of Big Bear

Thanks to Laird for another great event. Results.

Rain threatened on Friday but mostly held off. It was a beautiful sunset even if the ground was a little soggy. The course drank it up and it was tacky at worst and dry otherwise. Laird has really nailed the venue and found a place that is basically impervious to weather. This is my third 24hr event with Granny Gear this year and every course is rideable regardless of weather.

Emma and Jeremy had plenty of kids to play with. Susan rocked as usual, taking care of me and the kids. Her burritos were a huge hit with Chris and Wheaton. There were a ton of families there and lots of innovative campsites and base camps and a TON of RVs.

If you have never ridden this course in WV, Big Bear Lake is one to hit. They even took out a small section of road and added MORE singletrack. I think the only section of anything that looks like a road has a total length of 1/4 mile. There are two short sections throughout the entire race course. It's pure East Coast singletrack goodness.

I drew fourth in the rotation following Mike Pearce, MattyD and JoFo. Mike ran and got a flat. MattyD came in clean but JoFo came in with a flat. I was worried...

I had a clean lap at 1:11:04. I felt great, rode REALLY hard and had a great time. The next two laps in the dark had a variety of issues.

It's hard to even recall what happened when but my first night lap had: bad shifting including a stick getting lodged into my derailleur and locking me into my highest gear in the rear, a flat that I pumped up with CO2 to avoid having to change it, a pedal strike on a rock that almost kicked me off the bike and my battery coming unplugged. I pulled a 1:23 which was a bit faster than my slow laps back in 2006. In 2006, my fast lap was just below 1:18. Had we sent out another rider before Noon (which we should have, looking back), we would have been a lap up on last year. We got 14th last year, this year we were 5th overall, fourth expert.

The boys from Athens kicked ass all over the course. They only beat us by two laps this time, which is why I now realize we should have sent another rider out. I wasn't paying enough attention.

We had Joel, Kent, Chris and Wheaton camping with us on the other DCMTB/City Bikes team racing Vet. They got 8th overall. We also had Illana racing 5 person open and Darren 'Time/Space Warp' Biggs racing (sandbagging) on a Sport team. SHAME!

That Tecate Rides Again team had some of the most random mechanicals EVER! Broken (shattered!) granny gear (?), derailleur, four chains (three were on Darren's last lap), flats... They laughed the whole time.

I'll find some pictures. You have GOT to make plans to race this next year if you haven't already. It is worth just going to RIDE, let alone trying to race. It's that good. I mean, hell, you start at the TOP of the course!

The pics of the start with Mike, Kent and Darren are up top, right. The run, MattyD in the foreground with the boys in the back, Susan waiting for the run to start and me playing guit after my last lap.

I've got more...

J-rock kickin' it like MF karate in Wheaton's chair. This is probably the only time this kid stood still. He's rad, he jumped in the mud, he was 'talking to the froggies' with his sister, they threw rocks into the swamp, they played in everyone's tent, they shared food at our camp and others...

I'm not sure what Emma was getting into at this point, but she's sitting down, which was rare. It's probably why Susan shot this pic. She's got MattyD's bike in the foreground. She ALWAYS smiles for the camera. She's not afraid.

Maybe she was in trouble...

This is the never-ending uber-editing post, eh? I bet nobody realizes that this is the third or fourth set of edits that I've done today. I'm such a pain in the ass.

Here's more pictures of the fam, MattyD, me and Laird after the race. Obviously, the shirts were orange this year. The art from all of the shirts so far this year has been great. One of the things that I miss from a lot of the California races I used to do was the rad shirt artwork. Susan still has the Cool Mtn Bike Race t-shirt that I got back in 1998 from Cool, CA (yes, that's an actual town in the Sierra foothills, outside of Sacramento). Laird got the art from the boyfriend of an ex-employee, if I heard the story right. I'm not a 'bright-shirt' guy but I'll wear this one fo sho.

Jeremy was playing 'Superman' with this improvised cape, courtesy of Susan. He was running around 'saving' people. It was pretty hot in the sun but this damn kid had to have this heavy-ass towel around his shoulders.

By the way, if you haven't seen Knocked Up yet, leave the house right NOW and go see it. It's funny as hell. Also, check out the movie Grandma's Boy (which I think went straight to DVD). It's pretty funny. Inappropriate, to be sure, but really, really funny.

10 days until 12 hours of Cranky Monkey down at Quantico. We'll see how that goes. That's a lot of local pressure. I'll get some more burritos going for that one, fo sho.