A good day on the bike

Another 24 Hours in the Old Pueblo has come and gone and this year's running will occupy an especially warm spot in my memories. Quite simply, it kicked ass.

Team GnomeBrew clocked 11 laps with Cindy-John rounding the course 3 times, yours truly pulling 4 circuits, and wife Beans and bro Veelz with 2 strong ones apiece. All singlespeeds and two of them fully rigid. Scooter even did one of his laps on a 29er borrowed from Sluggo. No major mechanicals, no light system meltdowns, and in comparison to last year, no debilitating full-body cramps or uncontrollable shivering fits for me. That last one probably has to do with the just-about perfect weather this year. It rained lightly and briefly Friday night but the front passed in Saturday's pre-dawn hours and left us with as great of weather as February can reasonably be expected to have. There was enough wind to keep our camp's Jolly Roger flag unfurled but not enough to flip the EZUps into the wash or make the race any less enjoyable.

Cindy started things off with the running lap and came back way ahead of her anticipated time. I was next up, though the teams' second and my first day lap started out with a coupla' little mishaps. One of my rear rim brake arms somehow lost the return spring stop between camp and the staging area, leaving me with massive pad drag. A quick trip back to camp for the frantic application of three zip ties with the help of JFK from QQQQ, a maddening, halting sprint back through a herd of escaped children, and I was back in business, albeit 5 minutes late for the baton switch. Then, about a half-mile in on the intro singletrack, I threw my chain. After I worked it back around the freewheel, I noticed that the chain seemed loose. I didn't want it popping off again mid-Bitch or anything so, perhaps against my better judgement, I loosened the axle bolts and re-tensioned the chain. Fortunately, it wasn't off by so much that I had to get into repositioning my brake pads in the slots, though I did need to recenter the arms. I suspect this is something I would have caught if I hadn't run out of time to do a tuneup beforehand. At any rate, that was the last issue, mechanical or otherwise, I had during that lap and in fact, it was the only wobble I felt during the entire race. No flats either. I even managed to walk not one inch of the Seven Bitches, or anything else for that matter. Well, I did run my bike a few meters out a sand trap or two, but I owned the climbs.

My first lap ended with a baton handoff to my wife. A quick kiss for luck and she was off. I met her at the finish chute just over 2 hours later and she was crying tears of joy. It was her first time around the course at a full-on race pace and she'd ridden fast and flawlessly. Coincidentally, her last all-out effort in a mountain bike race occurred ten years ago during the Odyssey at Oracle, located in the Santa Catalina Foothills just across the valley from Willow Springs.

Veelz followed Beans and Cindy, on the first night ride of her entire life, followed Veelz. My second lap went off after hers and was so uneventful that it seemed from rote. Denise went out after me again came but back frozen almost solid. I saw Veelz off at about 2:45am, retrieved my topped-off batteries from the Light and Motion booth, and, knowing Cindy wanted to do her third lap during daylight, I timed myself to be geared up and ready to roll on a third lap when he got back.

My third lap was the spiritual one. I rang the bell for Kona and Steve on the way out of the tent and headed for my bike. I pedaled off under a bright waning gibbous moon, continued through a pink and peach sunrise, and finished sans lights in the flat grey light of the early morning. The vision of Orion between cirrus clouds, the pearl strings of other racers' lights in the moonlit fields of cactus, the nearby light and smoke from Twenty-Four Hour Town, the distant sparkling lights of Oracle, and the yet-more-distant glow of my home, Tucson, all combined with with fatigue and sleep deprivation to simply blow my mind. I came back and left the baton with the timer. GnomeBrew was going off the air for a while.

I grabbed a whopping 2 hours of sleep and woke to learn Cindy was out turning the cranks already. She wrapped things up and rode her Retrotec back to camp. By then, it was warm outside and I was in my ceremonial last-lap casual wear: baggies, a Fat Tire western shirt jersey, and Drunk Cyclist socks. I rode back up, took the baton, and started on the team's final lap at about 10:15am with strict intructions from captain Veelz to finish after 12 noon. Finishing before noon would mean someone would have to go out for another one and a case of group bonk had already spread through the team like a virus.

As it turned out, the fourth lap was on track to be my fastest one, and I started the descent from the High Point near Sassy's grave at 11:30am or so. Its the fastest part of the course and there's no way to make it last a half an hour short of doing trackstands. I flirted briefly with the idea of barging into the tent before noon and making Veelz go out, but realized that I would probably have to pull through myself and double lap it. I was right - I learned later that he was already in street clothes and doing some volunteering at the scorers' tables. I'm still wondering if I could have gone around a fifth time, but it was way past time for such pointless heroics. Besides, I'm reasonably sure that my fouth lap put us one up over just one other team, assuring us we'd be S2DFL (second to dead fucking last).

More importantly, I had arranged for teammates to meet me at the split between the Slickrock Woohoo and the chicken-out trail with some beer so we could run out the clock together. I pulled off at the Y and searched around - nobody there. Were they late? Were they lost? Or did they drink all the beer beforehand and pass out at camp? Then, a voice called from atop a large boulder. "Are you looking for someone?" It was my soon-to-be new best friend from the Three Blondes and a Fro team. I said I was looking for my teammates with the beer. She offered me their extra one, as one of them was abstaining. It may have been Fro, as she too was running out the clock. I was directed to their cooler and was astounded the find that the free beer was none other than a Fat Tire Amber Ale. One of my favorites - far fucking out! I opened it with an epic bottle opener shaped like the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lampur, and downed it while rapping about the race (they did 4 laps apiece, bully!), dogs (people who don't like them can't be trusted), and chocolate (same deal as dogs). The Blondes and Fro heckled and meowed at everyone who took the option trail, even Tinker Juarez. I thanked them for the brew, and rode down the chicken trail, clucking away, and finally encountered my team right outside the chute. Beans produced another Fat Tire from her Sonora pack and it went down as smoothly as the first one. I finally went through the tent after I heard the course marshall yelling that the race was over.

Scooter was there to close out GnomeBrew's last lap, but he wasn't there to make sure I didn't nearly fall down while pushing my bike out the exit chute. It turned out that pounding two beers right after racing a fast lap, getting 2 hours of sleep, and filling myself with a handfull of CaMgZn supplements and Sportlegs capsules, about a pint of Gu, and a Clif Bar or two had left me a little buzzed. I guess Drunk Cyclist didn't just refer to my socks.

And that was it for the bike racing.

We said goodbye to Cindy and her husband XRMattAZ from QQQQ, as they had miles to go (to Prescott) before they slept. We also wished camp-mates JFK and Million $ Dave from QQQQ, aka The New Mexicans, a safe journey back to Cruces. Breaking our own camp seemed to take forever and the 50-mile drive home was a blur. As usual, we missed the talent show (we have no talents) and awards ceremony (there's no prize for S2DFL). Beans and I cleaned up and met Veelz, Cool-een (w/Butters), and QQQQer PooBah for the traditional post-race grub down at Macayos. Back home and straight away into unconsciousness.

And that is how I spent my Presidents' Day Weekend.