On May 1, a group of 20 of us headed to
Fruita for the
18 hours of Fruita mountain bike race. For those of that are not familiar with
Fruita, it is a town about 4 hours east of Boulder. It has tons a very cool single-track mountain bike trails.
I was 'competing' on an 8-person co-ed team and Michael competed on a 4-all male team. I use the word competing losing because our team was all about fun and non-
competition. Michael's team wasn't trying to win but they were
competitive!
The race started at midnight on Friday night and ended at 6:00 on Saturday. Yes, this meant that part of the race was in the dark. I was a bit apprehensive about riding in the dark but it was so much fun. What made it so much fun was that we all had lights and about 50 or more people are riding the 6-mile circuit course at the same time as me. My first lap was at 4:00am. It was a bit crazy to set the alarm at 3:20 to get up to ride a mountain bike. As many of you know, I hate mornings but for some reason getting up a 3:20 made me
excited. I rode my first lap in about 40 minutes. My second lap, I started around 5:25am. The first part of this lap was still in the dark but dawn started to come up half way through the lap. It was so cool to be out in the morning during this time. Once I got back to camp, I changed clothes and climbed back into my sleeping bag. I feel sound asleep until 8:30 when my teammate, Joni, knocked on my tent because my next lap was going to start in 40
minutes or so. I got up, put back on my biking
clothes to wait for
cindy to come back in. This third lap was the best lap. I felt so refreshed and it was in the daylight which made a difference. I rode this lap 5 minutes faster than I did my previous 2 laps.
After this lap, I had a
significant time to wait, 5 hours, to be exact. It was nice hanging out with my teammates during this time. Around 2:30, I took out for what was
supposedly my last lap. It had
down poured while I was waiting for this lap, so the trail was quite slippery. this lap was much different from my previous one but still fun. When I came through the hand-off section, none of my teammates were there so instead of waiting, I took off for my final lap. I wondered what I could actually do on this lap since I was a bit spent from the previous lap. However, this lap was just as fun and I was stoked that I was riding again!! I was so excited that I actually went 30 seconds faster!
What I didn't expect was this was the last good lap for anyone. Right when I finished, it started to downpour. It rained so much that the a lot of people couldn't get through the trail. It was so muddy that eventually the
sponsors ended up re-routing the race course.
The race ended at 6:00 and we were all very happy!
The race was so much fun that we have plans to go out again next year!
For a more exciting read, read
Scott Gurst's experience.
