The 14th annual 24 hours of Great Glen, all I can really say is, WOW…WOW. What an event. For those of you who aren’t from the northeast, it has been raining here, a lot, and that is an understatement.

I went up to the course on Friday to do a little scouting of the expo area, camping area and to preride the course. It was pretty much the same as last year so I was pretty familiar with the tricky sections. However, with all the rain, those tricky sections got just that bit trickier. I was quoted a couple times after the preride saying “someone is being taken off that course on a stretcher.” Yeah, it was that bad.

Saturday morning got here and everything went the way I planned. Up at six, everything loaded in the cars, belly full of food by 8:30 and at the venue by 9. We did the camp set up, pre race meeting and all of that good stuff all with enough time to spare to check the bikes over once more and prop the feet up for the last bit of quiet time I would have for the next 24 hours.

12 noon and BAM the cannon goes off.  I sat the first lap off so an extra hour of sitting around waiting to unleash that pent up excitement.  When it was my turn, I flew out of the gates.  With about 3/4 of the lap done and a ton of mud on the bike, I hear some clicking from the rear wheel.  Look down and shifting a bit helps but I just decided to back off the gas a bit.  After about 2 minutes of the easy pedaling, I heard a loud crunch and the rear wheel locked up.  A look down confirms it, the rear dérailleur is in the wheel.  How wonderful.  Time to pick up the bike, put it on the shoulder and time to start running.  15 minutes later I dropped the bike in the timing tent and walked disgusted back to the camp site.  After some looking and working on the bike, it was decided that the dérailleur boss rivet broke and it was time to to switch over to the back up bike.

Let’s fast forward to about 4am.  Why?  Simple, nothing too exciting to talk about besides me riding around in a circle every other hour.  We just kept switching laps, each of about 55-60 minutes long, all with no major problems or interesting stories.  Then around 4am when working my way up to “the shoot” I caught up to the rider ahead of me.  I began to yell ahead to warn him I was riding down it, as it was clear he was walking, I thought he would just step out of the way to let me through, the proper thing to do.  But instead, no, he started to walk down this muddy path and began to slide down it on his ass while holding his bike.  I turned the corner and there was nothing I could have done but just “let the good times roll” and fly down that sucker.  Of course the moron was still laying there, and gave a horrible effort to get out of the way.  Fine, I am the better rider, so I work my way around him a tad and BAM!!!!  It sounded like a cannon going off.  I picked myself out of the mud while the moron sat there staring at me.  I shook my head and ran back up the hill to grab my bike thinking “crap, I need to change a tire”.  No big deal.  I work in the tire industry so no worries.  I grab the thing and notice the wheel has exploded, hence the noise, and completely folded in half.  WHAT!?!?!?  A tacoed wheel??  What the hell??  Fug….Time to grab the bike, throw it on the shoulder, again, and run it another 20 minutes.  I got it into the pits again and time to work some magic.  We grabbed the wheel off of Kelly’s bike, switched up the rotors, and was back in business.

The rest of the laps up until the finish were all status quo.  We finished the day with 24 laps (12 each) in 24 hours 27 minutes.  Good enough for 2nd place.  Nothing wrong with that.

Let’s fast forward to today.  Legs are a little sore, but nothing major.  I feel like I was just on a hard “weekend warrior” ride.  Nothing major.  I think I could go for a ride in the next day or so if I had a working bike.  Maybe I need to get that Pugsley back up and running while the other 2 bikes are getting fixed.

What is next on the horizon??  No idea.  Tons of riding that is for sure.  It would be a shame to lose some of this good fitness I have going for me.  I will scout around the area and see if anything is coming up, but I haven’t given it much thought.  There has been a few races that are coming up that I would like to do, but I will be traveling for work.  Damn you Interbike.  I have wanted to attend you for so long and now that I have to attend, I don’t want to go.  Funny how things work like that.

I can say a new bike is on the way to replace the broken hunk of junk Vassago.  Should be a good time.  The bike should be here sometime before the weekend.  I can’t wait.

A full write up on the bike, when I get it, and hopefully a bunch of pictures from the 24 hour race will be coming in the next day or so…