So I spent the weekend travelling from home (Boulder CO) down to the warmth of southern arizona for the 24 hours in the old pueblo race. Considering Colorado is currently under heaps of snow, this was a chance to go ride bicycles on dry single track and generally bask in the sunshine.

I did a mini write up with some sunny photos and my experiences from the weekend. I hope someone here will appreciate it:

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I was on the bus chugging to DIA at 6pm, wishing I had forethought buying a burrito before lift off.

Denver was cold. The airport busy. Luckily internal flights require little stress, and we headed straight to the gate to find some liquid relaxation.

I was asleep by the time the wheels left the ground, but luckily I awoke for the decent into the Grand Canyon state. Tucson pretty big for a small city!

The desert isn’t always warm – Mt. Lemmon which towers above town was snow covered, and clouds hung around on our drive out to the venue.

Cholla (pronounced ‘Choya’ to those without Hispanic persuasion) are an evil mass of sprawling tendons, each reinforced with hypodermic weapons. Their modular structure means clumps will break off at the slightest brush from skin, borrow unimaginably deep into appendages. Pliers are as useful for body as bike here.

24 hour town seems like a halluciation sometimes. The common purpose of relocating to the desert for a weekend makes this a town like no other – can you imagine living in a place where everyone was this passionate about pedaling?

Our practice lap of the 16.1 miles of singletrack was done on Friday. The sun refused to surface all day – it was warm whilst riding, but no sunbathing was possible. Everyone seemed just a little disappointed that we’d come all this way for cloudy skies!

Although our team had perhaps the most professional base camp going, consensus was to drive back to civilisation for dinner on Friday night. It was a good idea. The waiter was perplexed by our zealous consumption of Tortilla chips. By the time our meal arrived, hunger levels had equalised to moderate, allowing us to dine with less haste.

The race starts much like every other 24 hour race – the huge number of people and range of abilities means that a bike start is impossible, thus carbon soled cyclist take to the dirt road in an unsteady stampede before finding their bikes in the melee of bodies.

My teammate Bryan had done this before and I knew our team would be in safe hands with his lead out. It also gave me an hour to get on the bike, get in gear and prepare to hurt myself!

We had great expectations going into the weekend, but nerves had been wracked a couple days earlier when Cycling News told me I would be racing people I normally read about in magazines, people that get paid to do what I wish I got paid to do. Undeterred, we went into the race with the mindset that riding bikes in the sunshine couldn’t not be fun.

24 hour racing is an experience like no other, and in a sport where individual toughness is normally key, the reliance on three other people can be difficult. I think the fact we ride so much together and socialise outside of racing makes our team very different from others – we know the ins and outs of our team mates. Being able to take a joke at 3am whilst dressed in damp lycra is an essential part of the deal.

We were pretty happy with our finish! We ended up lapping second place and annihilating the competition with a record breaking 23 laps. Sam cruised across the line with a huge grin on his face, knowing he’d anchored us onto the top of the podium!

The journey home was difficult. Sunburnt sweat stained bodies were piled into car, piled into restaurant, piled into hotel room, piled onto plane. Our group lumbered from each situation with un-hidden lethargy, glad to be done racing and no incentive to move faster than need be.

It seemed like a bit of a dream – such a whirlwind trip to the sunshine. Especially now that I’m sat here in Colorado with the snow falling again!

I put a similar write up my blog here, and you can read the official sponsor-happy version of events on the team website.

Oh, and here’s a teaser video (we’re making a full one, but its taking time!)
[video]http://vimeo.com/37149438[/video]

Hope the sunshine photos will give people some motivation to hit the trails and gain some fitness in time for summer!

Love it, brilliant, more threads like this please

Thanks jhw, I’m glad someone can take some inspiration from it.

I started blogging when I moved over here so the parents could keep up to date, but I hope that the stories are interesting to a wider audience, too!

Thanks for taking the time to tell us about the race and event; you’ve done something that many of us can only aspire to! Good photos too.

Thank you Metasequoia – the aim is to get people to aspire to it, then go out and do it!

Am digging this thread … but have to go out and pick up our curry 🙂 Back later – will have a proper peek.

Envy.

I’ve been following an old acquaintance from team ‘Competitive Cyclist’
racing in the Rutas.
They were down that way training before the race.
Looks great.

love the pics, looks like you are have fun 🙂

I’m beginning to think rain is a legal requirement for UK 24s 😥

Great photos, good narrative, exceptional podium result. Excellent verk. Life Stateside, eh, living the dream.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hwx26h7Vu8M[/video]

Excellent – loving the pics too! 🙂