Park City 07

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Steve was into doing some longer MTB rides and on his 30th birthday, he had done a ride called the BARF ride that is a 80+ mile MTB ride that links all the peninsula open space preserves. Looking to build on that, he somehow convinced me sign up for the Endurance 100 race in Park City, Utah. This really didn't sound like my cup of tea, but eventually I was persuaded and I signed up for the 50 mile MTB race. We roped Daisy and Ben into making the event into a trip out to Utah, and I scored a co-worker's condo in Park City. We loaded up the Allroad and headed out!

The first few days, we spent tuning the bikes, getting acclimated to the altitude (7k feet), and riding some of the course (or at least what we thought was the course). Getting to Park City early was great, but there was always that underlying sense of nervousnesses and tension as Steve and I tried not to burn too much energy on these pre race rides(Daisy and Ben were pretty carefree though, as they were sane enough not to sign up for the race!) The time we had to tune our bikes was great though, since I broke the cardinal sin of doing major maintenance before a trip! I changed my shoes and chain before the trip, and to fix that mistake, I ended up having to buy an XT cassette at resort bike shop prices! The shoes though, actually worked out pretty well :)

At the pre race meeting, it was cool to see the pros like Tinker Juarez and Chris Eathough. I remember looking around the room, and thinking, "Holy shit, I'm the fattest one in here! (and also, after seeing the course map, "I'm and not going to finish this race . . .")" Steve and I spent the evening doing some last minute maintenance and then turned in early . . .which was a good thing, since we had to be up at 4a to make the 5:30a start time! At the line, in the dark, everyone seemed to have the same nervous energy. As the gun went off, we all mounted up and started before we even knew what was happening. My goal was to the make the first checkpoint (22 miles) under the cut time of 2.5 hours. I made it . . .barely. This course was really challenging. Nearly the entire course was single track with 8.5k feet of elevation gain, and there was enough technical sections so you couldn't just coast and recover; you spent as much time working the downhills as working the uphills! As I was descending into the first checkpoint, my legs began to cramp, and I thought, "uh oh, this is a bad sign." At the checkpoint, I took 20mins to rest, recover, drop my lights, and get some nutrition in system. As the day went on, the nutrition really became the hardest part of the race. Water, Gatorade, Electrolytes tabs, Gu, and even some beef jerky, it was a chore to get anything in system and keep it down. You know that you need to be eating and drinking, but your body just isn't having it. I was surprised just how jacked my digestive system became; I had absolutely zero appetite for the 2 days following the race and had trouble keeping anything down.

But as I rolled into the second checkpoint, I somehow got back on the bike, and finished up the last 15 mile loop (walking much of the climbs at this point . . .) As I rolled in across the finish line, I very carefully dismounted from my bike, and fell over! I couldn't get back up . . . Steve gave me hand, and I came to learn that he had finished the 50 miles checkpoint, and decided that he wasn't going to continue to complete the 100; I didn't blame him . . .

About 7 minutes after I rolled across the finish line, a big cheer went up from the crowd. I looked up, and the winner of the 100mile Mens category came rolling across the line! The winner, Chris Eathough finished the 100 mile course in the time it took me to finish the 50 mile course! That was the final nail in the coffin for me to realize that, I am just not made to do these types of races :)

Results:
Men - 100 miles: #DNF Steve Myers (MindTribe)
Men - 50 miles: #26 Derek Wong 9:40:03 +4.25.57