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Written by Andrew Freye
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Thursday, 04 October 2007 |
 12 hours of Bradbury!
Bradbury State Park, Pownal, ME
September 22, 2007
The first annual 12 hours of Bradbury kicked off this year. I couldn’t think of a better place in Maine to host a 12 hour race. The race course was a 10 mile loop of pure Maine singletrack.
A week before the race I was busy getting ready for the big race. I made sure I had plenty of gels, made some energy bars, had a good stock of drink mix, plenty of flat coke, and had my bike ready. A couple nights before the race my roommate Burns and I saw a commercial for an all you can eat pasta dish at the Olive Garden. With that said, our pre race dinner consisted of Olive Garden Pasta.
Race Day morning: the plan was to get up around 6am eat some food and get to the race with time to set up our gear under the team tent. 6:30am, Burns hasn’t gotten up yet. This put us back by a bit, and had us running and hurrying to get everything packed into the car. We make a quick pit stop at Cyr’s house to pick up his diabetic medication that he forgot and then it was a quick sub 10 mile trip to the race course. My warm up consisted of hitting up the facilities and walking my bike to the start line. There were about 60 riders at the start line of the Le Mans start. Because the course is 95 percent single track and 5 percent dirt road a good start was semi important. I must say I was surprised to see some people doing a full on sprint to there bike. Me, I just jogged to by bike and entered the woods in the top 10. Within 3 minutes the guy in front of me clipped his handle bar on a tree and ate it hard! Wow what a way to start off 12 hours of riding.
The first lap was a warm up, just chilln'. I road with Burns and we chatted throughout the lap. Going into lap two about a half mile into it my rear derailer snapped. Wow this sucks, ran back to the pits, hopped on the Carver Bumble Bee (29 front wheel, 650b rear) and proceeded to big ring the entire 2nd lap. Have you ever done something stupid, but continue to do it? Well that’s what my 2nd lap was like, and the 3rd and 4th, and the 5th! Reality started to sit in after 4 hours of pushing hard gears and playing catch up. At this point I kind of realized I wasn’t going to catch up to Burns and the leader, and if I did I wouldn’t be able to hold of for the rest of the 12 hours. At the half way point Burns had about 15-18 minutes on me. Also at the mid point in the race I put on a new set of shorts and jersey, added some more chamois cream, added some grey hound juice to my aching knees, and ate some food.
For the last 6 hours my knees were killing me! I have never had knee problems like this. Also I have never pushed hard gears for that many hours. I was about ready to quit after 9 laps, but I really wanted to do a lap in the dark and get that 100 miles in. So I headed out for an easy last lap. I finished my 10th lap around 7pm and had plenty of time to go out for an 11th lap, but decided against it. My knees were toast and I was tired!
It is hard to say how I would have faired if I didn’t have a mechanical so early in the race. Maybe I would have been able to hang onto the leaders, maybe I would have had a mechanical later in the race, or maybe I would have died around the 11th hour. Who knows?? But it was a ton of fun and I can’t wait for it to happen next year. Maybe I will do a two person team, or try to tackle the solo category again….
A
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