Dirty Spokes 12 Hour MTB Race

I rode as part of a 4 man relay team in the Ft. Yargo Dirty Spokes MTB Race yesterday. It was cloudy for most of the day with a little drizzle early, and then it gave way to some nice, cool conditions. There were a lot of folks racing this event and hats off to all of the solo 12 hour racers, especially Shane and Mark on the single-speeds. They really suffered through the 12 hours and not many people would want to do that.

Our team was a good mix and our main goal was to have fun and see how competitive we would be, but not go into the race with pre-determined expectations. We went with a line up order of Jim Behning, Theron Colucci, Stephen Jansa, and myself. We did not change it and all of us successfully did 3 laps each. Stephen did about 30 minutes in the dark and I did a full dark lap. We were able to keep good lap times with Jim and Stephen doing laps around 1 hour, Theron around 58 minutes, and myself around 55 minute (except for the dark lap which ended up being 1:05).

As time went on it was apparent that we would be a solid 4th place if we just kept doing good laps. Third became out of reach about 7 hours in and since it was an open field, the top team really turned the pedals and put almost an hour into us.

All in all the race was great fun and we all were pretty low key about our place in it all. My favorite thing of the day was watching a co-ed 2 person 6 hour team that had a toddler. One of them would do a lap and exchange both timing chip and baby at the same time so the other could do their lap. They had it down to an art.

I must say that watching Mark Stewart and Shane Schreihart suffer through the 12 hour solo singlespeed race was enough to make me never want to race 12 hours on a bike doing anything. It looked very painful. They have my respect but hopefully there is no lasting damage to them.

Results