24-9 - Race or Survival

In my short cycling career I have experienced many types of races, one however I have never tried was a 24 hour race. This weekend Cory, Bill, Chris, and myself all threw down our season best efforts at a podium finish for the National Championships. Cathy and I got to Wausau friday night the weather was forecasted to be hot and sunny. Just as we were getting ready to head off to bed Bob calls and warned us about a storm cell that just popped up and was heading our direction. We loaded all the bikes in the team truck and tied down for the storm. The next morning we woke up to rain, wind, and a flooded pit area.
I was the first one out so I got dressed and went for a short ride to spin the sleep out of my legs. We started with about a 1/4 mile run to our bikes, I had a good run and was the 4th rider across the start line heading out to the first of my 13.5 mile laps. The course was really wet but I think these are probably the best trails in Wisconsin or even the Midwest for wet riding conditions. By the time Cathy went out for her first lap the trails had dried up really good. She wasn't sure what team or event she was going to do up to this last week. Two of our teams had kinda died out so they combined and put together a 5 person team. She did not like the course at all during the WORS race but loved the way this course was layed out and knocked off a 1:16 hour lap.
So this is how the rest of the day went, drink water, go ride, drink gatorade, clean up, drink water, eat, drink gatorade, relax, drink water while mixing gatorade! It got really humid so keeping the fluids going was going to be key to survival. I was the last person on the team to run in daylight getting in just after the 7pm mandatory light time. Before loosing the sun light I put my light on right away after getting back to the pits. I used heavy duty masking tape, like I have used all summer, to hold the battery. Turns out I have never used that in 100% humidity and streams of sweet pouring over it. When I was out on my first night lap I got about half way through before one piece of tape let loose, this caused the battery to swing and unplug itself. I had to stop twice because of this, finally I got it to stay on but the third time the entire battery just fell off. Fortunately another rider stopped and gave me light to find my battery, and reroute the cables to my back pocket. I made it in with a slow 1:07 lap. Cathy went out for her first night lap and was riding really well until hitting a tough rooted section. She crashed and really gashed her elbow good. She quickly got up and assessted the cut donating blood not only to the trail but all over her bike as well...SWEET!! She rode to the next aid station where they cleaned her up a little before finishing the lap. Once she got in and cleaned up a little she headed into the hospital for stitches. Here is the conversation while the doctor was stitching her up at 4:15am:
'Doctor' "How did this happen"
'Cathy' "Riding my bicycle"
'Doctor' "So what time did this happen?"
'Cathy' "About 1.5 hours ago."
'Doctor' "WHAT you where riding your bicycle at 2:30 in the morning!? Did you just get out of bed and decide to go for a bike ride?"
'Cathy' "Well actually I haven't gone to bed yet...I am doing that 24 hour race at 9 mile."
'Doctor' "You must be crazy! Here I will put some extra wrap on in case you decide to do another lap or something."
While she was at the hospital storm #2 was brewing FAST. I had just finished my second night lap and quickly tore down camp before everything got wet again. About 5 minutes after I finished it started raining harder than I have ever seen! Cory was out on the course at the time and got stopped at an aid station. The race got stopped for a while so the race officials could decide what to do. Problem with this is that it took all the time gaps out of the race. Cory came in and I went out on a mission to gain some time back in the bad conditions. I had an awesome lap, probably one of my fastest only to find out that the race had been called off due to tornado warnings and that they froze the field the lap before it rained. I was pretty bummed to here that both Cory and my efforts in the mud where for not.
We ended up 4th in the Nationals and 5th over all the teams. Not too bad for just a local team who had never done a 24 hour race before. Cathy's team had a wonderful 5th place finish out of 25 teams in the 5 person category!
Driving home was a struggle and we pretty much just crashed as soon as we got in the house. This week will be a lot of cleaning, recovery, and eating.
Haven't pulled the pictures off the camera yet, so check back tomorrow for a picture blog.