24 Hours Of Kill..Your Body...ington!

The Granny Gear Productions team puts on a stellar race. They do a bunch a year and the 24 hours of Killington was great! There was a trials team FJ Cruisers to test drive free shwag and tons of cool people. We arrived at the solo camp area (right on course) at about 9 am Saturday morning with the shop trailer and about 10 riders worth of gear. We were right on course and in the action and thus, very happy. After about 40 minutes of setting up the tent running power cords the bike rack and stand, food table, light chargers and...lots of stuff a guy whose tent was up on the hill behind us showed up and was not exactly happy that we "totally parked in front" of him. He said we should have used some common sense and not blocked him in (he wasn't blocked in). Under my breath I was saying "well dude, you should use some common sense and not set up on a hill above the prime spot to set up the Littleton Bike shop trailer" but being the humble Northern NH person I now am I said nothing but "sorry". He then asked "well, can you move?" Carol and Jamie both fielded that question to me seeing how I parked the rig and the New Yorker in me killed the Humble Northern NH boy and told the common sense wizard to find another place to put his tent..."don't care were you stick you tent buddy but we're not moving!" In my defense I am only a jerk when such actions are necessary retaliations to some bone head trying to toss his weight because he thinks it's cool.

OK, enough of that...the race was straight up brutal. It is a horrible combination of Conyers and Pats Peak that makes to wanna cry. The short course we rode was a mere 9 Miles with 1,350 ft of climbing that started 50 ft out of the pits. So if you want to know what eating a bunch of food and then putting your HR into your throat feels like you could dine and dash at a doughnut shop with it's regulars...or come race at 24 hours of Killington.

We started with a grunt up a few ski trails that had a little plateau then another grunt followed by a few short single track sections. The next grunt was the big one and from when you started climbing you didn't stop for more than about 100 meters which I used to stretch out my aching back. All in all, the climb was about 20 minutes long and a combination of grass, rocks and stone dust. Once at the top of this beast you turned sharply into the woods and tore through this steep, winding, rooted, muddy single track that was similar to the highway to hell at Pats Peak. We got about half way down it the first time and Jamie looked at me like a puppy dog who just hand its tail slammed in the car door. My only reply was "here we go again!" After the plunge into the depths we had a few more turns through the single track and into a nasty muddy trail that tossed you all over the place before getting to a 50 meter head wall of mud. Another traverse across the mountain and we were at our last climb, this one was short and shallow, it's only purpose was to bring you to another winding trail through the woods (it also was another good place to cut a couple minutes off your time! Which I think happened a few times looking at some of the lap time discrepancies). Then it was across the flats and back into the woods. 10 more minutes of single track, a ride across a foot bridge and we were done with lap one around 1:10 PM.

We stayed consistent with our laps throughout the afternoon bringing in times around 1:10 to 1:20. The top three guys would hammer for as long as they could and they bonk for a few minutes then get back on and hammer for and few more laps then rest. It seemed crazy and by 7 pm their times were beginning to fade after each rest. We moved up to 3rd around 8 PM and stayed there until the end of our 7th lap at 9:30 PM when the stress fracture in Jamie's right wrist forced us to stop. It was a hard decision to make but weighing all the options and the circumstances it was the best. We curled up and went to bed only to wake up feeling like losers. We got a good hard ride in and by pulling out of a race for the first time in the history of Team LBF made us hungry to ride at Great Glen.