WOW, it has been quite some time since I made a post and there are some good reasons for that. First, lets talk about the 24 hour race.
It was one heck of a race. Starting at noon with a 1k LeMans start (which meant I had to run 1k around a pond in bike shoes) put me in a spot of bother from the beginning of the race. I haven’t run in quite some time and I never ran in bike shoes with STIFF soles that don’t bend one bit. My first 2 laps were completely plaqued by cramps in both my quads and hamstrings. After the second lap, I almost fell off the bike because I couldn’t straighten or bend my legs. Not such a good time. Good thing we had a massage therapist in our team camp and she started right away on working them out. Did it help?? Probably, but I could feel the soreness the rest of the race.
Our team strateragy was simple, I ride a lap, the teammate ride a lap, I ride a lap, he rides a lap and so on and so forth. This kept me on the bike for about 50 minutes with a 50 minute or so break each time. Around 2am, we decided to take a 30 minute break between laps to talk things over and give a little rest. This might have hurt us in terms of placing, but we weren’t out there to win. With this being our first 24 hour race, we wanted to just be competetive and have a ton of fun. DONE AND DONE. Overall, we finished 5th out of 15 teams which was a shock to us. The team did a total of 21 laps with me doing 11 of them. Good times for sure and we are already putting together a training schedule to put us on top of the box next year.
After that, I took some time off the bike as my keister was a little sore. Following those 3 days off, I am now traveling for about 10 days or so. First I was in Ogden Utah for the Rocky Mountain Xterra Championship, congrats to Jamie Whitmore for winning the women’s race, then it was off to Driggs Idaho to check out Yellowstone National Park (which I thought was a bit of waste of time….nothing to grand in that place to be honest). I can honestly say I don’t think I will visit Yellowstone again as it wasn’t so impressive. Way to much of a tourist trap for me. While driving along, I saw 4 18 wheeler trucks and 2 Budwiser trucks. Seriously, I saw 2 Budwiser trucks going through the center of Yellowstone National Park. You know something has become over populated when you see Bud trucks coming through it. Next will be Grand Teton National Park for a wedding this weekend (one of Kelly’s friends) and hopefully that will be much better then Yellowstone. Kelly has been taking around 200 pictures a day, so it will be a while until I get to sort through all of those and get them posted. Hopefully next week when I return I can get that done.
Other than that, I’ve just been “keeping it real” and relaxing while on the road. I will try to post again (and sort through all the photos) as internet is available.
