|   12 hrs of Blue Mound Post Race Ramble | wb
Oct 19, 2003 3:46 PM | | Race was yesturday. The riders apparently had fun.
Has anyone here ever ran a 12 hr event? I'd never been to one, but due to the original volunteer who signed our club up to doing one bailing 10 days before the event, I've now attended & helped organized such a festival.
I need some sleep.
I'm not sure how our solo winner from Micheals Cycles managed to do 23 laps at the Blue Mound trail, nor why these people subject themselves to this agony & keep smiling. Anyone who's ridden BMSP knows that we like rocks - I'm one of the chief trail designers & I ride a duallie, and it shows. So figuring that the rocks would be painful enough, we chose as easy of a line as we could and made a 4.1 mile loop - thinking that it would still give 'em 35-45 minute laps.
Not until dark, apparently. Daylight laps were coming in under 30 consistantly, and one guy kept getting 26 minute laps. They slowed down alot when the sun went down.
I rode out onto the course to exchange digital media with a photographer (give him a blank, bring in a full for downloading), and saw the riders walking many obsticles, crashing on the hills, sliding in the leaves, yet they got up and kept going.
For 12 hours.
We had poor attendence (mostly due to the confusion when the original organizer tried to cancel the event), but managed to break even. The fall colors were spectacular - if I get a chance, I'll post a link here after we get the photos on the club webpage.
One of our club members made up a bunch of bullet-proof plastic medals engraved with the race name for our first place finishers. They are sized to double as beer coasters. Our last minute sponsor (Erik's Bikes) gave out a lot of tubes (we had a lot of flats) and some schwag. We scared up about 8 volunteers who did an incredible job of running registration, timing, course marshalling, DJing, and many of them also rode on the 3 hr race. Then came back out this morning to help take down the course.
But I've been directing, assisting, setting up, taking down, handing out food, fixing the timing computers, changing the course, posting results, awarding, announcing, smiling, and of course riding. Yesturday started at 5 and ended at 11, and the day before I snuck out of work at 2 to get the course set up (which ran pretty late as well) so I'm back at the office on Sunday catching up, and writing this while I wait for a report to finish running - correctly I hope.
I'm tired. |
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