Wife's birthday, prepping bikes, life, work, everything. Late in the week the frenetic pace and some horrible demons were wreaking havoc on my poor wife's psyche. She had completely convinced herself that she was not prepared for the 12hrs of Temecula. True her bike was not in the best shape, something I remedied some time just before midnight on Friday night, and the previous week consisted of too little training and too much bad eating... not to mention the fact that we hadn't done a training ride longer than a couple of hours since I don't know when...
Despite all these things I knew one thing, she has the best fitness she has ever had. She is stronger, leaner, and faster than ever before. Could she go hard for 12hours, we didn't know.
Now we do!
Lap 1, minus the prologue, was 58 minutes and she had a major race on her hands! Siren Mary (of Tour Divide fame, she rode 3000 miles in June!) was leading the pack of three with Shalyn Gates and Allison right on her wheel. Allison turned lap after lap after lap right around 1 hour in length and Shalyn held a 5-10 minute lead the whole day, a lead that had unfortunately developed when Allison crashed twice on Lap 2. I don't know what happened to Mary but she wasn't with the leaders. It was amazing to watch the two of them. Neither was giving up. Allison kept telling me that there was no way that they could maintain this pace, but they did.
Lap 7 was where the race turned for us. Shalyn stopped to change clothes and Allison left the pits ahead of her. Shalyn was unable to bridge the gap and they never got close on the course that I know of. After 8 laps Allison begged me to find out if she had to do 10, I told her that they were definitely on pace for 10 before she left for Lap 9. The meeting of the men then ensued, I asked Jason if they were doing 10 and he said they were. It was a huge gamble for me to send the shell shocked Allison out on the 10th lap, we didn't know how far back Shalyn was. I joked with others that if Shalyn didn't go out for 10, I would ride out on course and have Allison pull the plug. Shalyn left for lap 10 with around an hour and a half till the cutoff.
I can't imagine how hard it must have been for both of them to go out after nearly 11 hours of very fast paced racing and suffer up the climbs, it was hard for me to watch.
Allison finished her 10th lap with around 15 minutes to spare, Shalyn came in with about 4 minutes to spare. Awe inspiring!
The top three Pro Solo Men had completed 11 laps.
In any case, these girls are legit! They are fast and strong and they don't friggin quit!
Since I am a photo whore and just got some photos of me from our trip to Utah (courtesy of Liz), I figured I would post them up to add some color to this post. I was riding my Intense Socom out at Gooseberry Mesa (not the best bike for that ride, but it was all I had)... Good times!
A couple of steep rollers...
And me showing the girls how to climb a steep ass rock on a 40+ lbs DH bike with a 36T chainring and a road cassette...
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