By the numbers, I came in at 11 hours, 25 minutes with 10 hours and 47 minutes of moving time. 11th place overall, 4th place singlespeed. I was just over an hour behind the first place singlespeeder (who was on a cross bike. Chris: you are a madman. . . )

The course was pretty brutal, mostly due to two things: washboards and wind. I think my brain is still rattling from the washboards on the dirt roads in and out of the course, and the sound of wind rushing by my ears will be lulling me to sleep for the next few days.

If you haven’t checked out what the course looks like yet, you can download a Google Earth overlay “here”:http://www.handlebarsandwich.com/gps/SYDC%20-%20Full%20Route.kmz and check it out. As you can see, it was a 25 mile section out to a central location (the ‘gas compressor station’) with two lollipops coming off from that point. If you just did loop 1, it was 82 miles; just loop 2 was 91 miles; and the whole enchilada came out to a whopping 123 miles. The nmes site claims 8400 feet of climbing, but my gps was reading closer to 9400 feet when I hit the end of the course. Either way, it was a pretty long day.

As the course was mostly dirt roads, it was pretty fast, with the only section of singletrack to slow you down a bit at the “White Mesa trails”:http://www.blm.gov/nm/st/en/prog/recreation/rio_puerco/white_mesa_bike_trails.html. This was about 30 miles into the course, and ended up being somewhere around 14 miles long. It was a really fun section of course, and I’m glad it was in there to break up the roads a bit. I cleaned most of it with the exception of a couple hike-a-bikes and a section where I got a little off course and hiked up a hill that was pretty much straight up (the switchbacks I was looking for ended up being around the corner, oops).

Up to this point, I was having a grand old time. I was eating consistently, I was drinking enough, and my legs were feeling pretty decent.

However, on the way back down the road to the compressor station, the winds hit. All of a sudden my legs started working overtime. I met up with a couple guys who were also battling the wind, and we hit some rotations through a paceline to try and break it up a bit. I finally took a pull up a hill and popped off the front a bit (sorry guys, wasn’t meaning to) and ended up cruising most of the rest of the way in more or less by myself. Once I hit the compressor station, I refilled my water, dug into my drop bag of PB&J, bananas, and extra shot blocks, and contemplated what I was about to do.

Visions of battling headwinds alone for 25 miles back into town were running through my head as I evaluated possible courses of action. I may have told myself at one point in time that it was OK to just turn back towards town and call it good at 82 miles.

In reality, that really wasn’t an option. I may have been tired, I may have been less than halfway through the mileage, but I came to do a dirty century. Just being dirty wasn’t going to cut it.

I may not be fast, but dammit, I sure am stubborn.

So, I refilled my pockets, told some people who were heading back in that “nathan from flagstaff was going for the full loop, and I’ll make it back eventually”, grabbed my light from my drop bag, and pointed the bike north towards “Cabazon Peak”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/lad78518/502072860/. The wind was at my back for the way up to the turnoff, so I regained a bit of (false) confidence, refueled a bit more while I could still let go of the bars while riding, and dug in for whatever was ahead.

I made good time to the turnoff and started the loop around Cabazon. At this point the wind was picking up and the clouds were mounting overhead.

As the sky grew darker, I hit the northernmost point on the loop, turned southwest and put my head down. I tried crouching, I tried standing up, I tried moving my hands in and out on the bars. It didn’t matter, the headwinds sucked, there was no way around it. I saw the possibility of finishing before dark start slipping away as my average speed began to drop.

Then, as luck would have it, about halfway through the western leg of the loop (after 4-5 miles of battling the headwind), the wind changed. All of a sudden the headwind from the south became a crosswind from the west. Although the possibility of my bike tracking straight disappeared quickly, I was never so happy to have a raging crosswind.

I soon met up with Mitch and Jeff and we cruised back along the southern part of the loop. Things started looking up as the clouds parted and the wind (tailwind now!) kept us moving at a steady pace.

They pulled away on the last part of the loop and put about 20 minutes on me when all was said and done, but it was nice to have somebody to ride with for at least a few minutes (this was the only time during the race I was riding with someone else).

I made it back to the compressor station and filled up my pockets for the last time. I popped in some tunes and started the ride back. I didn’t realize it was slightly uphill on the way in, which made for a nice ride out. My knees were starting to hurt at this point, so I didn’t push it too hard, but kept a nice pace in order to keep somewhere around a 11:30 finish time.

I rolled into the “Turtle Mountain Brewery”:http://www.turtlemountainbrewing.com/ 11 hours and 25 minutes after the epic adventure started, exhausted, dirty, and thirsty for a 22 oz beer. After I battled to peel the (now adhered) spandex off my body in the parking lot, I threw on something lacking a chamois and headed inside for a post race refreshments.

In the end, it looks like 61 people started, with 12 doing the full 123 miles. There were 5 singlespeeders total (4 did the full 123) and 2 tandems (one of which did the white mesa loop, insane!). The results are up “here”:http://nmes.wordpress.com/nmes-bragging-rights/2008-bragging-rights/1-san-ysidro-dirty-century/.

All in all, a very fun race with some cool people. I only wished I would have met more of them during the race, but I guess that’s how these things go. I did get to have a couple beers afterwards at the brewery, and I’m sure I’ll see a lot of them again at the next one I make it to.

Nice job to everyone, my hats off to all who made it out.