The running joke used to be that I only rode my mountain bike once a year and that was in a race. Sadly, it was always pretty close to the truth. Once out of college, my mountain biking went from a hobby to… well, just another bike to move with me as I changed homes. I had perfectly valid reasons for this; I had become a runner again, I didn’t have anybody to ride with, and my bike, while still a fine steed, was old-tech and not upgradeable to “the new stuff” (disc brakes). I still liked her, and felt she was faster than me, but late last year I upgraded to a lightly-used Scott Scale 29er from Craigslist. Not only did this baby have disc brakes, but they were hydraulic, and it also had this new fangled idea… 29″ wheels, which may not sound like a big deal when compared to the traditional 26″ wheels found on most mountain bikes for the past forty years, but it is. The idea is that bigger wheels roll over bigger things and tend to carry more speed. You pay for this a bit in weight and loss of tossability, but the common thought is this outweighs the negatives… I digress… I’ll end the bike hardware chatter with “I was far from sold on the bike after riding it a few times over the past six months, but following this race, I’m all for it… It (not me) is fast.”

As you may recall, I last entered a mountain bike race in 2008 with this same event, the 12-Hours of Cranky Monkey in Quantico, VA. Having done very little mountain biking since then, even less running, but really ramping up my road biking over the past year, I had no idea what to expect. I wouldn’t have been at all surprised had my times not improved… and that’s why I “blame” the bike. I got a lot faster. My times from 2008? 1:27, 1:25, and 1:23. My computer from that year tells me each lap was about a mile longer, but I’m not sure about that… I wasn’t using GPS back then and I’m certain my cyclocomputer wasn’t calibrated properly, but again, I digress. This year’s time? Well, my first lap was a 21-minute best, 1:02. As expected, I learned a fair bit about the course and the whole mountain biking thing in general for my second lap, resulting in a 1:00, and learned even more as I trudged through [sans energy] my third lap in 1:04. The course was fast, my bike was fast, and I suppose I too got a little bit quicker. I couldn’t be happier.

Ah, yes… So it was a relay. While some folks do bike the entire twelve hours on their own, I’m not that masochistic… I’ll take two teammates, please. Returning from my previous team was Alistair, and we added a ringer, Ben, to round it out. Al and I, putting a combined <10 rides in the past two years, fully expected a very low finish position. Ben would certainly prop us up a bit, but surely not enough to overcome what I’ll affectionately call "our suck." How wrong we were… Apparently, road miles, as they’ve been doing for my running, transfer to this other sport pretty damned well. We finished the day in third place in the men’s open division with the best battle of the day [in my opinion] for second. For our "troubles," we were awarded some pint glasses, a pretty nice water bottle, and a $30 gift certificate. Can you say "pro"? Damned right you can.

The day itself was a long one, but luckily the weather treated us right, which is unheard of for this event… Historically a blistering and humid day. We were back and forth with a few other teams throughought the race, shuffling between third and fourth for most of it, when we found ourselves in second with two laps to go (scheduled to be Ben’s and then mine). The team in third was now comprised of two very good riders and had cycled out their slower rider, who had given us a pretty good edge throughout the day… So they were catching us.

A quick interruption for some back-story… Wednesdays at Wakefield are an annual racing series at a park just down the street. This past week was the first race of the series. Ben, having put in some serious training this year, found himself in first place with a short bit to go in the Sport class race (think: Intermediate) when he was… Hrm… How to put this? Racing is racing. Racing for first place can get a bit risky. A young fellow named Jonathan pulled a move on Ben, which was totally fair in all racing sense, but caused Ben to lose control of his bike and crash, injuring his hand pretty badly. Neither Ben nor Jonathan won the race [on Wednesday].

Back to our race on Saturday… Following Ben’s lap, the third placed team was three minutes behind us with a rider who would best me by about five minutes on-deck… A third place finish would have been certain had I gone out, but Ben had been a touch faster than their rider all day; he would have at least given us a shot. So what did he do when he came into the transfer area and learned of this? He refused to hand over our timing chip and set off on his lap… Pulling a back-to-back for his fifth lap of the day. My body was shot after my third… I have no idea how he managed to muster up the courage to ride a fifth, but it really was our only shot. So he had three minutes on a rider he had been faster than all day. Not by much, but enough to convince us it was possible despite the whole fifth lap/back-to-back insanity. Would you guess who the rider of the third place team would be? Yep, Jonathan from Wednesday… and he was pumped… Far easier to chase [and on a fourth lap with a bit of rest in you] than to be chased. Al and I made our way up the course a bit to push Ben on if it came down to the last quarter mile for the win… We waited, and waited, and waited (apparently we timed it completely wrong)… Unfortunately, Jonathan showed up first with Ben about a minute behind. We had been beaten, but third place is nothing to scoff at. I wonder though, had I known my third lap was going to be my last (I was due for a fourth before Ben chose to pull his nonsense) would I have pushed out another two minutes? I’d have to think so, but racing is racing, and we were outraced.

Awesome experience that has completely renewed my excitement for mountain biking. I’ve gone so far as to schedule some mountain rides in my calendar and hope to make it out to two of the Wednesday races that are upcoming. CRAZY!

[GPS] [Results] [2008 Write-up]