when i got home late sunday night i had that look on my face. my wife saw it. it was similar to look i had after racing the cohutta 100 and driving 2 hours back to her relatives house. the 1000 yard stare. i was a beaten man.
our day started around 4:00am. i say around because i was up most of the night or at best sleeping fitfully. we were ready as we could be. we had spent the better portion of the afternoon and early evening prepping everything we could. it was on, one way or another.
things started to turn ugly when i realized i had no cable for the microphone for the pa system. argh. we would have used it at the start to make announcements and set the starting order. we would now have to make due with a aging megaphone.
we lined up nearly 400 racers at the shale pits, made some announcements and tried to contain the chaos. 15 minutes later and everybody is off and out on the trail. controlled chaos is the only way to describe the start. it was not pretty.......
from there it starts to all blend together. running water to the aid station by truck and by bike. dealing with injuries and heat related trauma, solving little issues as they arose, etc.....
did i fail to mention that it was a trillion degrees out? yeah it got real hot real fast!! i had soaked my Hawaiian shirt by about 9:00am. i apologize if i stood up wind of you!! yikes it was gross!
riders started to drop like flies after the second lap. we usually have some attrition but never like this. it was brutal out there. the heat, the course, the pace, it was kicking people right square in the mouth!
1st place pro Jason Sager finished in a little over 3hours. the course and the heat proved to add a bIt of time to everyone's laps. riders began trickling in for the next 3 hours or so. many doing all they could just to get to the finish line. others motivated by the "sirens of stewart" offering up salvation in a ice cold can of PBR! i will admit to sampling 1, for the racers sake of course!
the BBQ was off the hook! those guys did a fantastic job and we got nothing but kudos on the chicken and pasta salad! big props to the darkhorse kitchen contingent!!
the 4 lap format proved to be good, bad and ugly........
the good......
the course was freakin awesome! it was dry, fast, and damn challenging!
the bad......
4 laps meant tighter quarters for the racers, which didn't seem to be much of an issue actually. it also meant more traffic thru the scoring transition area. this was tough. with spectators, dnf's, racers, etc.....it got a bit congested.
the ugly.....
this made the results very difficult to compose and things got a bit turned upside down for a while.
first of all our scoring VOLUNTEERS are top notch. they devote their entire day to making sure that the results go smooth and over the course of 7 years and many races beside the 40 we have had very few issues. ICANNOT THANK THEM ENOUGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
it got ugly. people got a little cranky and the results got a bit wonky.
thanks to everyone for their patience, thanks for the input on who was ahead of who and helping to sort out your categories.
this is not our standard operating procedure! we are usually very smooth with results.
this process crushed me. it took way longer than it usually does. it just drained me down below my reserves. shattered. i suffered a promoter bonk! for this i apologize.
other than that we gave away a pile of great stuff! preems, swag, etc........
i need to send a huge thank you out to all our volunteers! without them none of this would be possible.
and of course last but not least thanks to all the racers who came out in support of our crazy little event! it was great to see all your faces! new friends, old friends, etc! its a wild bunch and we are stoked that you came out to enjoy our little party with a race thrown in for good measure!!!
thanks again to all!!!!
do we have to start planning for next year already?..............
cdubs says..."my fork is full of fairy dust! i can ride over anything!!! WEEEEEEEEE!!!!!"
