John Bryan 6 Hour Race for Relief

Photo lifted from Dave from the OMBA board.

Thanks to everyone at MVMBA. This race ruled!

The race for relief is a 6 hour race in the Springfield area, in which the MVMBA uses the proceeds to finance some porta-potties for their trail.

I partnered up with blogger extraordinaire, Robert to take on the men's duo division.

They lined us up for a LeMans-style start, but only had us run about 10 yards. Being the sleep deprived idiot that I am, I got out into the sea of bikes, only to lose mine.

After a few choice swear words, I found it, and busted ass to get up through the crowd into the front.

Our strategy was for me to do two quick laps of the 13.1 mile course, then pass the torch to Robert, who enjoy the advantage of a nice strung out field and minimal trail congestion.

I got onto Dane Sink's wheel, both a nice guy and a very fast local. I followed him around the first lap to try to get an idea of what lines to take. The trail was ripping fast and bone dry. I was in the big ring and my 4 lowest cassette cogs pretty much the entire time. Dane's trail knowledge was quickly apparent, and I let him go and settled into my own pace.

The first lap went through okay, Dane got a one minute gap, and come lap two, it was time to go a little faster and catch up with his teammate, Phil Noble.

Things were going well, I was hauling ass, then I leaned into a turn a little too hard, and washed out my front wheel in some loose stuff. See ya later catching Phil and see ya later hope of winning the day's fastest lap. Nonetheless, I recovered as well as I could, and finished a minute behind Phil on that lap too.

Besides that, nothing to write home about, My lap times stayed pretty consistent in the 50-52 minute range for the first 4.

Robert was movin' too, turning in 55 minute lap times. Consider me impressed.

Then things got interesting.

You'd figure a 6 hour race that started at 9 AM would end at 3 PM, right?

I did.

So when Robert went out for a lap at 2:15 PM, I figured that was it for us, and time to get on to the most important thing of the day... food!

After I pigged out on some well deserved food, I was sitting and relaxing when I remembered that at the prerace meeting they said they'd give us an extra 15 minutes of bonus time.

Shit! Robert was going to come in under the 15 minute bonus deadline, leaving me to do one more lap with a stomach full of coleslaw, pasta salad, and a veggie burger.

As the minutes ticked away, I was curious to see where Robert was. With a whole 2 minutes to spare, he came sprinting out of the woods with his bike. It turns out he flatted about a half mile out. He got to the line with a minute and a half to spare.

After seeing that, I was inspired. Pasta salad be damned. Mountain biking is unpredictable, and it only takes one broken chain or flat tire for me to catch Phil, would was out on his team's final lap.

So off I went. Man I felt lousy. I was able to troop it out with my slowest lap of the day at 55 minutes, but it felt good to do one more.

We ended up in second in the men's duo. Congrats to Julie and Rudy, who were also second in the co-ed duo.

The grand totals:

• 8 combined laps of the 13.1 mile course.
• Me with 5, Robert with 3. So 65.5 miles for me, 39.3 for Robert.
• My fastest lap was 50:30, which gives me a cool 15.56mph average.

Bring on cross season!