After doing
well at the Mohican 100, it was decided that I'd chase the 100 miler
series for third place. This of course involved doing more 100 mile
races then I originally planned. Only one more race, but that race
was only two weeks after the Mohican 100 and way up in Michigan.
Whatever, let's try it anyway. I figured the Michigan race would be
poorly represented by series challengers being that it was so far
away and not your usually 100 mile format. Instead of a
point-to-point event, the Michigan race (the Lumberjack 100) is a
twenty-five mile singletrack loop done 4 times. Each lap you pass
your car twice (there's an inner loop and an outer).
The
night before I left, I was running around doing everything last
minute, my brakes did't feel right. I call Evan at the shop and
he offers to drive out and take a look. Fortyfive minutes later, the
brakes are all bled and
feeling
better.
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The trip to the
Lumberjack was roughly fourteen hours. To share in the driving and
cost, I teamed up with Harlan and Tim. Harlan actually won
the
overall 100 mile series last year, so he's back to defend his title.
Tim is in the running for first place in
the
singlespeed class.
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It was a long drive. We saw a
lot of this, though at this particular moment Harlan was doing an
interview (of sorts) while Tim and I napped. For
a guy without a
job, Harlan works his ass
off.
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We had four bikes and a
rooftop carrier on my car. We were completely geared
out.
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We
left on a Thursday and drove to Ann Arbor. Tim had a
friend (Simon) going to school at the University of
Michigan and he let us stay at his
place. Simon was also
doing the
race.
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Simon and his roommate Katherine have a two
bedroom apartment in which we fit five people and thirteen
bikes.
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Coincidently
they had this quote on their fridge. Good thing they're cyclist,
cause we were living the cyclist life to the
fullest.
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Thursday night we went out
for Lebanese. Harlan's parents obviously didn't beat him enough for
playing with his food as a
child.
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Friday we drove the rest of the way to
the race course in western Michigan. Simon had reserved this
cabin for us not far from the venue.
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Unfortunately our cabin didn't have a big
enough pot to cook our required pasta meal (carbo loading). Luckily
Tim, having some familiarity with
criminal activity, found a way to get Lindsey
(she was the smallest) into the cabin next door and "aquire" some
more pots.
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And this is me completing the first
inner loop of the first lap. The race was miserable. The four
twenty-five mile lap format was very difficult.
A completely
singletrack course was also very hard to recover on. You were
constantly pedaling without much time to rest, eat or
drink.
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This is me after the race. I
survived. I didn't like it much, but I finished. I thought for sure
I'd be dead afterword, but little by little I came
around. It
took some time to eat and rehydrate, but it wasn't long before I was
feeling better. We even drove back to Ann Arbor that night
arriving at Simons around two in the morning. We sat up and
chatted with Katherine till about three before finally going to bed.
Up the next
morning at seven, we headed home. That's right.
We did a hundred mile race and drove fourteen hours on four
hours of sleep. We were
rockstars.
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Though we did have a little issue on
the way home. The car began overheating while sitting in traffic on
rt. 80. With the heat outside already
unbearable, we rolled down
the windows and cranked up the heat in the car to try and alleviate
the stress on the engine. It worked, and we
rolled home
safely.
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