Diablo Race #3

For this race, Puck and I decided to leave town on Thursday night in his truck since most Richmonders were staying in town for Best Friends Day and we'd be the only two making the drive to New Jersey. That gave us an extra day to ride and time to stop by his Dad's house in Hightstown, NJ.

Diablo runs their lift until 7pm in the midweek, so we casually headed to the park on Friday and began to take some runs. Unfortunately, a storm rolled in after only two runs. As soon as thunder was audible, they shut down the lift. To make matters worse, we learned that Diablo offers no sort of rain-check for instances like this one. We waited out the storm in the parking lot and met a rider from Brazil named Sergio. Even after the rain had stopped, the lift remained static, so we headed to the campsite and called it a day.



The next morning was damp, but the sky looked promising, so we got an early start and began the day by walking the course to check out this month's race run. Surprisingly enough, the course was much simpler than the last one. The bottom half was almost identical to their first course and it seemed to be the shortest run they've had in a race thus far.

I spent most of the day making runs on the course, but took a few with Puck and Sergio to break up the monotony. We even found a few trails that we'd never seen before at Diablo - helping the park's reputation in our minds after being smashed by the overwhelming acreage of Snowshoe.



The ground was perfect - grippy and soft, without even a hint of dust which usually plagues the park. The temperature was much better also after the previous night's rain. Around 4pm, we were exhausted, so we headed back to the campsite with a quick stop at a local pizza joint.

The rain returned that night, so we each retired to our tents a bit early. The next morning was clear and within a few hours the sun was shining brightly above. Again the ground felt wonderful, so the rain wasn't really too much of a downer. We were able to hang out all of our wet gear while we rode, which was toasty dry by the end of the afternoon.

I took a couple of runs on the course to make sure it felt roughly the same as the previous day, and then returned to the parking lot to relax and mentally prepare for the race. At 1:29 I left the top of the mountain and crossed the finish line a mere 2 minutes, 26 seconds later. It wasn't a perfect run, but overall I felt confident about my performance. I was the first rider in my category, so I was able to wait at the bottom for the two main opponents to cross. Dennis Yuroshek and his teammate, PJ Mihalick (2wheelfreaks) were my most formidable opponents, but I snuck away with the win 5 seconds ahead of them. The best thing about the finish was that all three of us on the podium were riding the same bike - the '09 Giant Glory DH. I'll be selling my frame at the end of the season too, in case anyone's interested.



After the race, we said goodbye to Sergio and headed for Puck's Dad's house for a cookout, then back to Richmond for a quick rest before the next race - SNOWSHOE!

18 hours

The 18 hour race is over. It's always a sad and sore day after this one.
This is as much fun as it is painful. I love it when it's almost here and I hate it at 3am.
My buddy Andrew and I had a battleplan of turning 2 laps each at the beginning, and then going on to 3. That leaves each teamate with enough time for a light charge and a meal and rest if needed.
Then Paul Leeger threw a wrench in that plan telling me that the best teams do single laps each. 1 and 1 and 1 and so on. So he got me thinking.
My legs don't get going well until about mile 6 when they're nice and hot, and if we only turn one each, there's no time to eat or charge up.
So we did 2 and 2.
The first time out we both made good times. Sub 50. If we kept that up, we figured that we could get in 19 laps. But that was BEFORE we heard that they would not count any laps after 10am. With that, we'd have to come in at 9ish in order to get one more lap in, not by 9:59. Personally, I didn't like that. Until the end.
The daylight runs were hot and sweaty, and the night laps were cooler, but WET. 80% forecasted humidity, but it felt like more. The fog was thick enough that it's hard to imagine that it wasn't falling as rain. But it was hanging in mid air, sticking to my glasses and making my gloves feel like wet paper bags. But hey, it was cooler than riding in the sun. It also settled the dust and made the trail tacky and fast.
The Pork Chop Express was steady holding onto 3rd place by 2am, about 30 minutes behind the leader. Not to bad considering we were up against the likes of 3 Bike Factory teams.
It was hard to stomach much of anything that I brought to eat other than the V8, the smoothie, and Guinness. I nibbled on my PBJ sandwich and sipped on some Odwalla juices. Anything that had lots of vitaminy goodness, I put into my stomach. And some Advil.
I went out a little before 3am with a fresh cup of coffee and fresh legs, and turned out 2 more. Then came in and sat while Andrew made his laps.
I looked around and noticed that lots of people were sleeping, and there I was trying to stay awake with the radio, the internet on my cell phone, and coffee. I paid for this. Good money too.
We cranked out 15 laps by 8am. I was the last on the bike, and pulled in just before 8. We had time for 2 more, but not the energy nor the motivation. Especially since the leaders were probably on lap 19 at that point. My rear derailleur was sticking and we wouldnt have seen the podium even if we had gone 2 more. It wasn't about winning, it was about fun, and I had a crap load of that. So we threw in the towel. My bike was making funny noises and that powdery dust had working its way into parts that will take some TLC to get clean.
I'd like to thank my ipod for supplying the tunes during the lonely night laps, and beer, for killing the pain and putting a few more carbs into my blood.