Ambassador Stories — Race Report

One rider, 24 hours, and a win nobody saw coming

A solo entry, a woodstove at midnight, and a decision that turned a January slump into one of the best weekends of the year.

It was dark in the house one early morning in January. I found myself awake, sitting in front of the woodstove, staring blankly at the flames. I was feeling quite lack luster about myself in that I wasn’t focused my general wellbeing, I was being too busy trying to get things done. The to do list had dominated my existence, so much that I wasn’t always getting it done, just obsessing over it. I needed a distraction that put some focus back on myself a bit. There in the witching hour of the dark early morning, I found a solo entry to 24 Hours in the Old Pueblo for sale, I bought it.

I lined up help from Grandma Emi, got permission from the family, and started riding my bike a more, well a tiny bit more. It will never stop being hilarious how much I am able to fool myself into thinking I will have more time to ride/train if I focus. I did manage to ride more often, but time was hard to come by as life keeps happening, it just does and my rides were kinda short. The idea of riding a mountain bike for 24 hours is nothing to laugh at and my legs were worried. I was scared of how much this could hurt, how badly it could go if I hurt myself. So I tried to make the most of my ride windows and plan out everything else I could, prep is key.

Rolling into 24 Hour Town

A few days before I was set to leave for the race, I got accepted as a Club Ride Apparel Ambassador. Cool beans! I scrambled to try and get some clothes for the race and ended up getting the hook up from the 24 Hour Town Rock Drop MC, Kaolin Cummins. He lent me a whole box of CB gear to make sure I was looking good.

I drove to 24 Hour Town in one fell swoop, it was long, but driving the red VW solo made for a sporty cruise. Still it was about midnight when I rolled in, I hastily found a spot and rolled out the bag and slept. I got to wake up on the ground with coyotes howling in the still quiet and sparsely occupied space in the Sonoran desert. The spot I chose in the middle of the night turned out to be perfect, just 50 feet from the course and I set an easy up right next to the route, right before the rock drop, perfect!!! I did a hot lap, then swapped from a 34×20 to 34×21. The rest of the day spent chatting with friends and neighbors. Friday it rained a good bit of the day, not the best when tent camping and trying to prep, but forced me to chill and be out of the sun. There were just enough breaks in the precip to get thing done, plus rain before a race in the desert is kind of a magical treat. WIN WIN WIN!

Noon. Baton in hand. Let's go.

Saturday morning was suddenly right now, my ducks were all lined up agap, but still riding solo self supported for 24 hours is game time. All the choices were suspect, did I choose the right gearing? Will I be ok running? Will my knee hold up? How many laps can I do, is this stupid to even try? Will the new tailwind hurt my stomach? Next your bike is staged and you have a baton in your hand and you are walking waay too far to the start of the run. Then you drop your baton and have to go looking, luckily someone found it and saw my panicking, searching face. Now wondering if I should have pooped one more time….Then boom it is noon, you are running awkwardly and faster than you’d ever like to run, people f$&king everywhere, faster, slower. I’m passing folks but it’s starting to suck, then you hit the bikes and it is pure chaos. Folks running, folks riding slow and awkwardly weaving back n forth, folks running with bikes, people everywhere screaming and cheering. It is mad crazy awesome just getting to your bike.

Now you are racing, going so fast and it’s tight and folks are passing all over, drifting tires. So good, oh man I was flying on that first lap. Tucking and pumpig hard, spinning like mad, working it to stay on the pedals. Fast, so much fun, and sketchy, first lap done. Straight out for another lap, feeling the speed of first lap, but stayed on the gas whole 2nd lap. Feeling good, stop for food, water bottles, couple pumps of air in tires.

Managed to play my cards as I hoped to, not easy for a whole day and night. Start strong, hopefully not too fast!, stay on gas, take shortest time off bike as possible, ride all night, drink, eat, drink eat. It did really hurt, around 10:PM my back went crazy tight from cranking up them bitches. Around 2:AM I was feeling shelled out, legs cooked, back tweaked, knee sore, eyes tired and burnt. Still I managed to stay on the bike, stay on the gas and keep cranking laps. I didn’t have anyone in the pits to tell me and I didn’t ask anyone about my place in the race. I stay focused on me and how to keep riding, I had the mindset of trying to get as many laps as possible. On my 16th lap someone recognized me and as we rode a bit together asked me if I was winning? I told him I didn’t think so, but he had the beta that I was leading!

That motivated me to keep the hammer on and slam out another fast lap. It felt so damn good, just amazing to roll that last lap knowing I hit 17 laps again, 9 years after my last 24HOP solo, I still had it!!! It wasn’t till I was all done and went to the timing tent that I was convinced that I had the win! So Utterly Destroyed and also so incredibly stoked!

The setup that made it happen

What was worn for 24 hours straight

Temps ranged from the low 40s at night to the mid 70s during the day. The kit needed to work across all of it without a complicated layering system eating into lap time. Here's what did the job.

The biggest thanks go to the family for the time away. To Kaolin for the gear hookup. And to that woodstove in January for making the whole thing seem like a perfectly reasonable idea at midnight. Sometimes the best decisions happen in the dark.