119.7 miles of trails

It's about time for me to write about my Epic (catch the double meaning?) race at 24 hours of 9-mile this past weekend. If you don't like to read (ahem, Hanna), here's the quick and dirty:

I raced 12 hours, on my mountain bike, by myself. I did 9 laps of the course for a total of 119.7 miles. Second place did 7 laps. So I'm psyched that I won, and I'm still hurting.

If you do like to read, here's the rest of the report:
After getting back from the track on Thursday, I opted not to take the time to pack up my car, and went to bed instead. Then I woke up on Friday morning, packed in about 15 minutes for 24 hours of 9-mile, and headed to work. I took off towards Wausau, WI on Friday afternoon. The plan was to pick up my mom in nearby Weston and then camp Friday night at 9-mile with all the U.P. cyclists. Of note: my mother rode a total of around 125 miles in two days on her mountain bike, loaded down with saddle bags, in almost 100 degree heat in order to meet me and be my race support. Way to go, mom! Fortunately, she was fully energized due to her consumption of Rock Star, apparently a favorite of Kid Rock and Snoop Dogg. The plan was fine, but my packing was not well thought-out. I had forgotten a sleeping bag, a sleeping pad, and any sort of rain gear. I guess I was thinking more about the biking aspect of the weekend than the camping aspect. At least I had my mountain bike -- in tip-top shape, thanks to Hollywood.

The whole scene at 9-mile was pretty impressive. It was the national championships of 24-hour racing this year, so a lot of the big shots in endurance racing were there, along with all kinds of team support from Trek, Mavic, Sram, NiteRider, Hammer Nutrition, etc, etc, etc. There were tents and campers set up all over the place, and we soon found the crew from the Keweenaw set up with the Cross Country Sports tent and a ton of coolers, bikes, and crazy endurance nutritional products.

I went and got my registration for the 12 hour women's solo event. I'd never done anything like this in the past - the longest race I'd ever done before was probably just over 4 hours. So I was a tad apprehensive on Friday night when I lay down to sleep on top of the scrappy wool blanket that I found in my car. But I was soon fast asleep. And soon awakened around 1:00am, by my mom, telling me, "Karla, there's going to be a tornado, we all have to go down to the park building." So I was soon wide awake, out of the tent, watching people scrambling around trying to get our things into the vehicles. Then I saw Dr. G's tent go rolling up the trail as he chased after it, and a couple others collapsed. There was some chaos for a while there, until the wind died down and it started pouring. But I was tired, so I climbed back into the tent and went to sleep.

The rain had pretty much passed by 8:00am, when we finally got up and got ready for the 10:00am start. They had all the racers put our bikes on racks and then lined us up to run about a quarter mile to get our bikes and then jump on and go. We started right on time and the race was on! The course was awesome - 13.3 miles long, about half singletrack, half doubletrack, and maybe 50 meters of gravel road. The first lap a bottleneck formed on the singletrack, of course, and I got somewhat impatient, but then I remembered that I had another 12 hours to ride the trails, so I got over it. My second lap was faster than my first, but I was still trying to be careful not to go too hard. To be honest, all the laps kind of blur together, so I'm just going to throw out some of the highlights.

- It was awesome to roll up to our support tent every lap and grab two bottles of cold Perpetuem, because it was frickin hot out, and I was sweating lots.
- I felt great for the first four hours, and I had an average heart rate of 160 (my LT is around 166!) Yes, I am a nerd, and I love statistics.
- There were all kinds of Twin Citians there - from Kenwood, Penn Cycles, Peace Coffee, and of course, Velo Bella.
- After about 7 hours, I crashed and bloodied up my elbow, knee, and thigh. So I was a bit of a wreck for the rest of that lap, until I finally rolled up to our support tent. My mom got me cleaned up, and told me that she thought I might be in first place by about 10 minutes or so. I was like, "Sweet!" And then, "That's it? I better get going! I need some of that energy frickin drink!" So she gave me a Rockstar, and I was back in business. It was weird - I felt so good after that, it was hard to believe the stuff's legal.
- I really loved the course, overall. The singletrack was reasonably technical, but nothing really unrideable. Mostly just a really nice-flowing course with sweeping corners and some fun rock gardens.
- After about 10 hours of riding, it started to get dark, so I got out my AWESOME Light & Motion ARC Li-ion. I love night-riding! It was pretty surreal to be out there in the dark riding, other lights flickering ahead of and behind me, totally exhausted yet euphoric at the same time.
- Around 9:15pm, I finished my 8th lap and headed out on the last one. (You do as many laps as you can start in 12 hours, and they record your final time when you finish). During that last lap, I was almost certain that anyone coming past me was a woman in my category that was going to beat me. I did 9 laps in about 12h 47m. All the results are here. It turns out that I had plenty of time on the next person and didn't need to do the last lap to win. I'll plan better next time.

After I finished the race, my lower back decided to turn into one enormous muscle spasm. It was truely incredible. I literally couldn't bend forward at all. I managed to sit myself down in line for the ladies' shower, but it took some real creative thinking to stand back up again. And once in the shower...well, suffice to say, it was a huge challenge. I managed to make it back to our campsite, shove a bunch of food down my throat, and then lay down to rest. Sleep wasn't happening with all that caffiene and adrenaline in my blood.

I could not, and still cannot, imagine all those people doing the whole 24-hour race who were only halfway done when I finished! They are truly amazing. And actually, the race had to be called in the early AM on Sunday, when it started thundering and lightning and pouring again. HUGE congrats to all the riders that were out in that - tough!

Thanks so much to everyone (especially my mom) who helped me out on the race day! I had awesome support and couldn't have done it without you!