First off, in case you weren’t around at the race, these are the trophies you missed out on. Pretty freakin’ sweet. They’re made from laser cut and engraved ABS plastic, and I designed them to fit in a 110 BC 5-bolt chainring. Pretty sweet.

All I can say about this race is wow. It was a great race to ride, because it had every kind of terrain you could find in northern arizona, and it was a great race to organize, because everyone was so excited about it.

I think I’m going to split this up into my story from a racing perspective and my story from a organizing perspective, hopefully I won’t draw it out too long for you guys.

The race was on a nice cloudy day, with just about the perfect temperature for the first lap. Not too much sun, and not too cold. Adam, Kevin and Brad went out hard up waterline road, and weren’t seen again until I caught up with Brad on Friedlan Prairie road (about 30 miles into the 42 mile lap). It took me a while to warm up, but I got in a nice rhythm on the forest roads, and finally started feeling good when I hit the singletrack on Sherlock.

I rolled into the aid station, and started in on my regular race routine of refilling pockets, changing socks, changing gloves, stuffing my face, and filling water bottles. I saw Kevin there, and he looked pretty dejected from his big effort on lap 1. He wasn’t going around for lap 2. I knew Adam was planning on it, and he was warming up in his car. I was actually a bit surprised he was still there, since the two of them came in about 15 minutes ahead of me. He rallied, and the two of us headed out for the second lap together.

We made it about halfway around the wet and muddy second lap without too much event. Unfortunately, that’s when the mechanicals set in. My left crank arm started loosening up, so I cranked it back down. It lasted about 5 miles, and I was stopped on the side of the trail again cleaning and tightening.

Soon after our second riding stop, Adam had a catastrophic failure of his pedal. The cage broke, and completely fell off his left pedal, never to be seen again.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, “Egg Beaters”: are not worth it. I’ve broken 3 pairs, and although they all got warrantied, it can’t replace the fact that I’ve had to ride home with broken pedals more than I’d like. Apparently Adam had a similar experience during this race.

After some discussion, he rolled back via one of the forest roads and I continued on down Fischer point. The clouds started building, and I kept pushing.

About the time I turned onto the urban trail, the clouds opened up and the heavens let loose. I was already pretty wet at that point, so I just threw on some sleeves and a windbreaker, and pushed onwards. No reason to stop, i would just get cold.

I should take a moment to mention that I very rarely stop for more than a few minutes during these races. I figured they’re long enough that I always like to be moving forward, no matter how slow. It’s something I’ve always tried to do, and I think it helped me pull ahead to a pretty decent size gap in the crazy 88.

I eat on the bike, I change on the bike, I rest on the bike, and occasionally I even sleep on the bike (and then end up on the ground. yes, it’s happened.).

I rolled back through town, and on the way had to stop another 2-3 times to tighten the cranks. By this point, I had accepted that they were done for, and it was just a matter of making it back now.

I rolled into the schultz parking lot, tightened the crank again, and headed up for what would be the slowest time I’ve ever had up schultz. About 45 minutes later, and I was back at camp.

The weather did break for my run up schultz, and I finally bottomed the crank bolt out in the spindle, so I only had to tighten it once on the way up schultz.

All-in-all it was a great race, and I’m really glad I decided to race it as well as organize it. It had an incredible diversity in terrain and trail types, and a good amount of vertical for a race this long.

The pace has been set, so I expect to see everyone gunning for that 10:07 next year.