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| 05-18-02 |
My
friends Miles, Bill and Kurt (also my brother-in-law) have all competed in at
least one other (Miles, myself, and Kurt have 3 while bill has one) 24 hour race
and Bill is the only one of our team who didn't race in Laguna Seca last year.
We originally were going to have a 5-man team but our fifth person bowed out so
we went ahead and competed in the 4-man category.
Furthermore, this race was also the site of the 24 Hour NORBA nationals so we
decided to enter that category just for fun. 
It turns out that the NORBA course had an additional 2 mile side loop that
wasn't part of the regular course and in my opinion that loop made for a far
better course. Each lap was just under 12.5 miles in length and the extra 2
miles included some climbing as well as ascending "The Three Bitches" which are
a staple of the Sea Otter Classic.
All
in all the race went quite well. We turned in 20 laps (250 miles) which was as
many miles as we rode last year on the shorter Adrenalin course with a fifth
rider. Miles pulled 6 laps, Kurt and myself pulled 5, and Bill pulled 4 laps.
Most of us all were quite consistent with our lap times as well so we were quite
pleased. Nobody had any flats or mechanical issues and no crashes were to be
had by our team. The only issues to speak of were with lighting.
The problems started on Thursday evening as we were driving through San Juan
Capistrano about 45 minutes from home
when I said to Miles "Crap! I didn't bring my lights (NR dual beam and
headtrip). I left them plugged in
so
they'd continue to charge during the day and I left them charging when I packed
up!" After thinking about it for a while, we decided that with Miles'
Blowtorch (4 hour burn time) we could just share it and use the car charger in
between uses to keep topping it off. Since each lap is about an hour, we
knew we could get just about 4 laps out of it even if we didn't charge it but by
boosting it when not in use we figured we'd be fine. Miles and I just made sure
that we didn't follow each other in the riding rotation and it worked out
okay..........for the most part.
Miles
was riding downhill when all of a sudden his Blowtorch just went out. After
stopping he was able
to determine that for some reason the battery cable had unplugged itself from
the light unit somehow so after fixing that he was on his way. My lighting
issues took just a touch more time though. On my first night lap I couldn't get
the Blowtorch to ignite. I think it was most definitely pilot error but I
figured I'd just ride with Miles' Digital Headtrip on my head instead (we shared
it for emergency use only and don't actually use it for extra light since the
H.I.D. is so powerful).
After going about 100 feet the HeadTrip kicked
into low power reserve mode even though the battery was charging all day. So, I
headed to camp and quickly figured out what was wrong (I just wasn't holding
down the button long enough to ignite the bulb but I had never used a H.I.D.
bulb before) and went on my way. I figure this all cost me about 7 minutes. My
second night lap was much more of an issue though. The course was very bumpy
and even though I secured the battery with the Velcro strap, it managed to
rattle out while descending at about 25 mph.
Once
it rattled out of the cage, power was instantly lost when the cable unplugged
from the light unit. I
did manage to stop without crashing in total darkness but I couldn't figure out
the problem initially. At first I thought the cable just became unplugged just
like had happened to Miles earlier but when I couldn't find the end coming out
of the battery because I COULDN'T find the battery I knew I was having issues.
I managed to find the battery again by Braille but was delayed by about 10
minutes because of it. Oh well, that's racing and once I found the battery I
was off on my way again.
I was quite pleased with my personal performance because my fastest lap of the
race was 62 minutes which was one minute slower than my fastest lap last year
even though this year we rode 2 more miles. I timed the extra two mile section
and it took at least 10 minutes so overall everybody on the team turned in much
faster times than last year.
One
of the coolest things about the 24 hour races is that some big time racers show
up for the events. Tinker Juarez was there and on my second night lap I
heard a couple riders behind me as I climbed up a hill. I'm not the best
climber in the world and will move out of the way whenever anybody is back there
so I just asked the rider behind me when he was ready to go just to let me know.
He promptly went by and there was another rider still behind me. I asked
him if he wanted to go by and he just said that he was fine for the moment.
Knowing that the trail turned to the left in just a bit and that it opened up so
it was plenty wide enough to pass, I told him to go by me on my left at the
corner. He did and promptly said thanks and told me I was doing good and
to keep it up. Well, it was Tinker! Of course, he pulled away like I
was standing still and he was probably on his 10th lap or so by then!
The most unique site this year was a team of unicyclists competing in the race.
I captured the lead rider on video just after the race start but never saw them
on the course with one exception. I saw one member of the team running along
the trail late at night but I never actually saw them riding. I would have
liked to have seen them on some sections of the trail just to see how they were
able to do it. I guess they ended up doing 16 laps as a 9 man corporate team so
that's impressive by itself!
Rishi Grewal was also there although he dropped out sometime in the middle of the night. He had a stable of Klein's waiting in his pits, each with a fantastic ghost flame paint job!
