Wausau 24 hour Mountain Bike

Wausau 24 hour Mountain Bike Race
Wausau, Wisconsin
July 31-Aug 1st, 2010
In the early spring of 2010 my friend Tyler sent me a message on facebook asking me if I would be back in the Wisconsin area in the summer and wanted to participate in a 24 hour mountain bike race. I said sure after about 2 seconds of thinking about it. Now, I must admit I was excited, and all in, but my friends ride bike a lot and I do not. So I definitely put my best effort into training for that and finishing my training for my 50 mile, but I didin’t really start focusing on the mountain bike till late June. Luckily my friends were gentle with my sometimes anal and senseless questions about the race and type of bike I should use. Of course they did give me a hard time about it.
We all met at the race on Friday night trickling in at different times. The race did not start until Saturday at 10 am, so we had some time to set up a few tents, the tent trailer, and the shelter. We had a nice set up. The team was going to consists of 5 of us. We each took one lap at a time until about 10 pm. Then myself and 2 other teammates did 2 laps consecutively in the darkness. The course was 11 miles long. During the day my teammates were running between 53 and 56 minutes laps and I was trudging along at about a 60 minute pace. At night things slowed down to about in the 64-69 minute range. It was a fun course, some short ups, some short downs, a few rock gardens and lots of single track. The experience included watching some ultra endurance athletes ride for 24 hours in the solo division. They are like semi trucks, not to fast, but very steady. I got to see some super fast brothers who cranked hard for 12 hours trading off one lap at a time. Of course there were some crazy fun teams as well. It was a great atmosphere, good course, and well organized event.
Overall we placed 8th in the 24 hour division and 1st in our category. The funny part about the 1st place in our category, was we went into the race just wanting to have a good time and we maintained that attitude throughout. We just happened to be the fasted group in that division.