Dirty Dozen

I haven't done this race in a long time. Since I was 16, I think. For a while there me and Andrew would do it every year, and considering our combined age was about half that of the teams we were racing against, we did alright. Got second on a team with our Dads once...

This year I got invited to be on a 4 person co-ed team, with Kim, one of the ladies that races in my mom's class and two other guys about my age, Ricky and Daniel. Our team was aptly named 'Three Cubs and a Cougar.'
All last week was rainy and nasty, I think Lance said something about the Seattle weather in Austin on his Twitter, but I heard Warda didn't get hit as bad, so there was hope.

Somehow Friday afternoon I managed to talk my mom into coming down and racing the 6 hour version. (I'm sure she'll post something about it.) So waaaaay too early Saturday morning we got up and headed out to the race. There was mud around and places out in the parking field were kind of mushy, but other places were completely dry, so I was still holding out hope the course would be in good shape.

The team had decided I was starting, since I would probably have the fastest lap times and could get us a nice early lead, hopefully. Which meant I got to do the run too! My favorite... Wooooo... It wasn't terrible though, no one was in any big hurry, so I got to the bikes around 15th and passed all the way up to 3rd before we even hit singletrack. Right before diving into the trees, Kevin Koen and some other guy I recognized, but couldn't put a name with, came by me, making them the only people to pass me the entire day! I followed them around for a while, but eventually they got away and I didn't see anyone else until the end of my second lap (we were doing two at a time - they were short) when I started catching people still finishing their first lap.

I tagged Daniel to head out and sat down for a nice two hour nap before it was my turn again. Repeat for a total of 12 hours. Well, almost. I had our first two 'night' laps - it didn't really start getting dark until half way through the second one, and before Daniel went out, he apparently asked everyone to talk me into doing an extra so he would only have to do one lap in the dark. I was already dressed and muddy, so I acquiesced and sat around and watched other people put better lights on my bike and helmet until he came back through.

At this point we were far enough in the lead that 2nd place couldn't catch us as long as we did the last lap, so I took it as more or less a victory stroll, although looking at the results it was only 5 minutes slower than my average lap time, and it was at night, so I must've been going faster than I thought...

In the end the team got 20 laps, putting us in a three-way tie for 2nd most laps of any team! (And we were only 5 minutes away from being able to do 21, which would've tied for the most, but I don't think we'd have gone out again.) We won the 4 person coed, and would've gotten 2nd in 4 person open! If that doesn't say enough, the team was great, I'd race with them again any time!

Here's some picture links:
I need to start wearing these socks more.
Nope, not muddy at all...