There are two reasons that I will sign up for any particular race. It either needs to have epic single track, or it needs to be a giant party. There was something about 4,000+ people congregated in the deserts of Moab that I just had to see. It's maybe the biggest 24-hour race in the world, and hosted the US 24-hour National Championships this year.
When 9 wonderful people came out to cheer and crew for me, I was hoping, at the very least, to put on a good show. My race plan was to have fun as long as possible, and when it stopped being fun, to put my head down and suffer.
The Le Mans start was pretty cool. Those who look closely at the people in this photo will appreciate the irony.
Those who have ever seen bike racers try to run can appreciate the cluster that occurs when 400 of them take off down an open field of tumbleweeds.
The starting gun was a potato cannon. Classy.
And so began 24 hours of bike racing.
My support crew were absolute rock stars. I owe them more than I could ever repay. RC and I went through lap by lap details of what I needed that morning. What I was going to have to have forced down my throat, what I was going to argue about.
From what I can tell, crewing for a 24-hour race is serious business not intended for hippies from Boulder. While I pedaled, they seemed to enjoy themselves.
They even built a berm.
Every once in a while I'd finish a lap and come visit. Each lap I'd make a mental list of funny and cool things that I saw that I wanted to tell them all about. The cool little gray mouse I almost ran over, the epic sunset, the new line down one of the XXX Danger sections that I found. Each stop, I'd forget. I'd pick up two bottles, some gels, argue like a 5-year old about not wanting to eat any more solid food, and head out for another lap.
After 6 hours the sun started to go down. I watched the sunset from high atop a mesa, both marveling at the fact that I got to ride through such beautiful places, and at the same time, wondering what the heck I was doing.
I had a killer set of lights I borrowed from
Chris, who apparently knows a thing or two about this enduro-racing stuff. 1200 lumens made it daylight in front of me through the dark and lonely hours of the night. The first two night laps were wicked fun. Then I realized I had 4 to 5 more of them to go before the sun came up, and then I had the potential for 3-5 more laps depending on timing, and my spirits dropped. 2 am was the worst. The thought of 10 more hours was completely disheartening and I found myself pushing my bike up hills, not because I couldn't pedal them, but because I was lonely, tired, and feeling like an idiot for signing up. Everyone else was pushing, I was going to push to. Welcome to the Eszter Pity-Party.
These are the times you really really appreciate your support crew. While I was always sad to be pedaling out into the darkness, leaving the fire, food, and music behind, using their infectious energy definitely got me up the major climbs in the first half the course. I left the pity-party behind and got on to the job at hand: actually racing my bike.
As the race wore on, pit stops got longer, motivational speeches got more frequent, and I started dreading more and more sections of the course. Then I'd get angry at a technical section and clear it just to spite it. I cleared every ridable (for me) technical section during my 4 am lap on sheer anger. Yes, 24-hour racing will mess with your head.
Around 6:30 in the morning, I started doing the calculations. Running about 1:50 laps with Sarah Kaufmann within minutes of me, it dawned on me that I had the potential of having to do 4 more laps if we both managed to squeak under the noon cut-off for heading out. 60 more miles. 4 more hikes down Nosedive, 4 more times up the brutally rocky first climb, 4 more times through the nasty sand traps.
I mentally prepared for three more laps and hoped for the best.
Then the time gaps started to open up. While I was out on course calculating madly trying to figure out how much time Sarah would have to lose per lap to miss the noon cut-off in order for me not to have to do 15 laps, the support crews were conferring. Sarah was done. She went out to finish her 13th lap to secure second, but she wasn't going to head out to attempt number 14. That meant that as soon as I made it back, I could be done.
The crew lined up on the finishing straight to tell me the news. I saw them from far away, I figured they were just out to try to lift my spirits.
I honestly didn't believe them when they told me. I was done? I didn't have to do another lap with the potential for two more laps? Were the absolutely, positively sure? I'd actually pulled it off?
I went to talk to Sarah's crew, just to quadruple check, and very happily signed myself off of the system for good when, through my not-so-coherent state, I realized no one else could catch me.
The face of exhaustion.
At that time, I swore I'd never do another 24 again. This morning I found myself laying in bed thinking about what I'd do differently. It's a strange sport we participate in.
Sarah made the race what it was. Our crews were set up across from each other, and lap after lap, we'd come into the pits within sight of each other. In a race format that the winner is generally decided by laps not by minutes, having a race so close added to the excitement. And the stress. She's a wicked strong bike rider, can ride the technical stuff with the best of them, and an amazingly nice person to boot.
I've thought about getting to wear a stars and strips jersey of a national champion a good bit. I hadn't really believed it was possible. I'd figured that I'd cashed in all my 'Ride of my life' tickets earlier this summer and this race was going to a good learning experience.
It was an amazing Waltworks Dream Team effort.
As I'm sitting here, doped up on plenty of Vitamin I, a half-eaten jar of Nutella next to me, and no plans to touch a bike for at least a week (except for commuting, of course), I feel an incredible sense of happiness, not because I won a bike race (because really, it's bike racing, we're not saving puppies from burning buildings) but because I got to spend a very special weekend with amazingly fun, supportive people who I owe at least several rounds of beer. I couldn't have done it without them.
What a perfect end to an absolutely perfect summer.
