Killer Weekend (the good kind of killer!)

This weekend being my first round-the-clock 24 Hour event I was able to gain some valuable experience. Firstly, forget getting rest, little sleep can be had and you generally don't much feel like eating to renew you strength. Second, Boyne has the hardest trails I have yet to ride in Michigan. There's 1250 ft. of climbing in one loop of 9 miles, some fast technical downhill single-track and more sand than I typically like. The final decent included a smokin' fast 1/8 mile of super deep sand that I found extremely hairy. And thirdly, I'm not in the kind of shape I would like to be in, this place kicked my behind!

We started the weekend by arriving early Friday afternoon, checking-in and moving-into the condo. We set-up our pit (two tents, chairs, gear, etc,) then hit the course for a pre-race ride. This was an important thing to do as none of us has ever rode the course but it took quite a bit out of us and knowing what we know now we most likely wouldn't waste our energy on a pre-ride again.

The race was started with what's called a Lemand start; basically you take the front wheel off of your bike and at the whistle run approximately 100 yards with your wheel in hand to where your bike is set-up. You then put the wheel back on and race away. Kind of an odd start to a 24hr race in my opinion but it was fun anyway. Lloyd raced the first lap so he was the one that had the pleasure of the foot race.

After Lloyd's first lap, he tagged me for the second lap, then Drew, Pete, back to Lloyd and so on. Our lap times were fairly consistent at 63-75 minutes per lap (mine being the slowest, for the record) during the daytime hours. We rode a bit slower in the dark (for obvious reasons). We raced pretty hard the first two laps and generally started to fatigue a bit by night.

The race got rained-out at 6:30am. Nasty thunderstorms rolled in and we quit riding after our first 4 laps each, so we ended up with 16 laps. Had it not rained we would have finished with 22 laps. I was disappointed we couldn't finish on one hand and thankful on the other, I was beat. My 4th lap (2nd night lap) was pretty hard on me. I was so fatigued that I was finding it hard to control the bike on the faster downhill sections as I was loosing upper body and arm strength. This proved to be dangerous as I nearly creamed a few trees at high speed in the dark. But harder yet was the climbing! This place goes up, up, up; so much so that there were a couple of hills I just had to walk up. There is a section called "the grinder" that just kept going up. It felt like I was climbing for 10 minutes straight, just to get to an even steeper climb later. All in all, 4 laps seemed about right for me. 5 would have been really tough and 6...well who knows...I'd have done it but would have probably paid dearly for it.

But it was a lot fun and my race partners were great company. These guys love bikes, riding them and riding them hard. I really do enjoy hanging out with them; they have great attitudes and lots of spirit.

Unfortunately, I didn't take many pics. I thought I would have lots of time between laps to walk the course and take some photos but I was just too tired and needed to catch some rest between laps. Time flew by. I did get a couple though and as others post photos on the MMBA forum I'll snag a few.

Also, if you didn't catch the hail storm on Thursday night I have included a shot from my front porch, it was pretty cool.

I drove over to our property in Charlevoix Friday night after dinner and got a couple of sunset shots too.