2008 12 Hours of Lodi Farm

It's hard for me to personally overstate the drama that was the 2008 12 Hours of Lodi... Weather threatened, Kent was out then in, teammates were dropping like flies...

On the grenade I jumped, volunteering for the first lap. Kent and Matty allowed me to set the strategy for the race: double laps for one full rotation then back to singles for the rest of the race.

I lined up for the pre-race meeting towards the beginning of the prologue loop from last year (hint, hint). Another quick parade loop through the singletrack was announced and I was in the cat-bird seat. I allowed a skinner-lookin' dude to get in front of me as a way to show others that I was in the front and solidifying my #2-into-the-woods plan.

We cruised through the end of the course for a solid 1/2 mile prologue then past the start finish. I was #2 into the woods. After the beginning of the first section of trails (before the field traverse), I took a few wrong turns (bad course markings) and I managed to stay in 8th by the end of the first lap. Tom 'Young Buck' from Family Bikes and Mikey 'Cargo' Pearce came by me as did a few other studs. No worries, I had another lap to catch somebody. The course was very different at the top and in the middle. I was lost as usual and confused, to be sure. Lodi has some turns in it, if you didn't know. I passed two people on my next lap and came in a little before 2am in 4th overall, second Expert.

To sleep...

Through the night, we went back and forth with the Troegenator's team. Their ringer was going against Kent and kept catching him, which is crazy because Mr Baake is quick.

Through the final set of laps, we were behind them. Matty went out a few minutes behing the Troegenators. Matty was riding HARD! Roid-rage hard. He was the only guy coming through our campsite HAMMERING! That boy is dedicated. Matty made up the time plus some (hard to do on that course) and he handed off to me with a 2.5 minute advantage. I climbed into the hurt locker that was inside the pain cave at the urging of my wife ('leave it all out on the course!') and DRILLED myself into the ground. I was tired then pushed harder then pushed even harder... I knew I had to kill those little hills, the only straight-aways in the course. Susan was at the end of my lap with the kids, urging me on. I came in to the start/finish fast and handed to Kent, managing to blurt out 'GO! GO!' The kids were stoked.

Kent Baake HAMMERED his lap and stayed out in front of Zach from the Troegenators. We managed a win. Zach came in hard and tired. We got him some fluids and did what we could to make him comfortable but that kid REALLY pushed that last lap. They were hard to beat. I would have been fine with losing to those guys. Great guys...

I would like to nominate Matty as MVP for the race. Inspirational... Between Susan's words and Matty's determination, I couldn't slow down. Our last three laps were 50, 50 and 51. Fastest lap of the day was 49.

1st overall, first expert. My immense respect for our dcmtb team continues to grow, especially Matty, Kent and Mr Fastest Lap, Mike Pearce!

Oh, and '70% chance of showers' in Spring in the Mid-Atlantic region means cloudy, dry and WONDERFUL weather... Pics to come later... GMR's pics here.

Of course, this brief race report leaves out the car battery going dead at Giant, Jeremy waking up crying in the car, the red ants, camping near the Family Bikes kids, trash-talking with 51-minute Young Buck and the kids 'falling' into the river butt-first while laughing.

At the end of my last lap, I got stung twice by a bee that flew down my jersey and was lodged betwixt my base-layer and jersey. That explains this picture from Gary Ryan. It was my last and fastest lap at 50 minutes. Here's the shout-out for Mike 'Fast-Guy' Pearce. Damn singlespeeders...

'Frieght train comin!'