Pats Peak 24 Hour MTB

Words cannot describe the feel of riding a bike for 24 hours. It's a mental game as much as physical. Last weekend at Pats Peak Jamie and I, defending champions, were 95% ready to go and race hard, we brought our new bikes and were prepared to hurt.

After returning from Patagonia we both have been training well and getting in plenty of hours on the bike. We've even commented to ourselves during weekly 7+ hour workouts that it feels like nothing to be out riding for 6 or 7 hours with little to no breaks.

Long story short, after Jamie's TWO high speed crashes, my Technicolor yawn and 20 laps of seeing the same trail over and over again we both said "Wow, this is really boring" We decided that for the sake of the Untamed Adventure race 10 days from then we should and would use Pats Peak as a training race and hit the sack. However, Greg Jancaitis our good friend and competitor blasted the race course and put in 32 laps for 1st place and a totally horrific 46 min pace! Greg is Racing for MS this year in a bunch of 24 hour MTB races and he makes about $5 a lap for charity...Check out his website and donate to a great cause! http://main.nationalmssociety.org/site/TR/Bike/MEMBikeEvents?px=4369451&pg=personal&fr_id=9042&s_tafId=73206

Lets take a moment and tell two little stories...

Flying down a a muddy S-turn, that was something like a greasy washboard with ferns all around, Jamie found the (nearly) perfect line. As he edged around the final turn he brushed a tall fern with him handle bar...what he didn't realize was there was a 4ft stake with a course marker hidden behind the fern (I know great placement, as if you couldn't tell which way to go the with yellow caution tape lining the trail around you and the 4 ft wide swath of mud cut through the center of the "death" valley of ferns) his bar clipped the stake and spun the bike to the left. Wilson went from cyclist to missile to sack of potatoes...make that very muddy sack of potatoes in all of about 1/8 of a second. He rose with the "puppy dogs tail got caught in the car door" look and was a little bewildered. I showed him the stake and laughed a bit while I checked his bike and he checked his wrist (see post "spills chills and Canadian thrills" section Wilson vs gravity for more information). Jamie's response was simple "What the Bleep is the Bleeping thing doing there? Take that the Bleep out of the ground and throw it in the woods."

PS The second crash was even cooler to watch...high speed body part yard sale on a wide open grassy slope going about 40Km an hour...HA

Last story...

At about 6 pm 10 laps into the race I started feeling "funny" (Funny: noun (1) blurred vision (2) stomach cramps (3) hallucinations (4) vertigo (5) you know...funny). I told Wilson that I was a little messed up and that I was starting to hurt way more that I should for this time in the race. Two laps later, I was on the verge of puking and we rode by a guy that knew us. He said "wow you guys are the ones that won this last year!...I want to be just like you, heck I want to ride half as many laps as you do" As this nice man was saying all these kind words I was responding with "Thanks...(Dry Heave)...oh your too kind...(Dry Heave...Dry Heave)...no really you don't mean that...(Dry Heave)...I..." The man then got off his bike and started walking the hill we were climbing. I started throwing up everywhere. I tried like the dickens to time my pedal strokes so that I wouldn't puke in my shoe but there was just to much puke and not enough space between strokes. So, once again I managed dirty a shoe with bodily fluid normally reserved for the shimmering waters of the porcelain thrown (see post Tuckerman Inferno)...The best part of that whole thing was hearing this guy behind me saying "he's puking...holy crap he's puking and still riding...riding away from me and puking"...Ah Summertime!

Yacky Out-