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24 Hour Nationals |
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Written by Matthew Block
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Tuesday, 12 August 2008 |
America’s Dairyland 24 Hours of Nine Mile
24 Hour National Championships
Wausau, WI
August 2nd, 2008
 2008 marked the 10th anniversary of this race and the third consecutive year it hosted the 24 Hour National Championships. Pretty cool to have the likes of Chris Eatough, Pua Sawicki, Mark Hendershot, Nat Ross and many other top endurance riders descend upon your home turf for a race.
 While it is the National Championships the event also provides non-championship categories as well as a number of 12-hour events. After 8+ years of being on different four person teams, duo and few solo events my good friend, Mark, and I decided last year to give the 12 hour duo open category a shot and we placed second. So this year we decided to give it another go as Team Overdrive Cycling/Bikeman.com to see if we could come out on top.
 The 14-mile course ran over a combination of XC-ski trail and twisting, rooty, rocky single-track. Race day conditions were great with dry weather and temps in the mid 80’s. I volunteered to run the Lemond start and pulled off a personal best first lap to keep us within three minutes of the lead team. We were close to suffering a near race ending mechanical when a big rock flipped into Mark’s rear Crossmax SL wheel bending a couple of spokes. Thankfully with the help of Mark’s sponsor the wheel was straightened enough to race on. I suffered no mechanicals, however, I did have a run in with a pine tree that shredded the sleeve from my Bikeman jersey and left a nasty gash in my shoulder.
On the third lap we caught the leaders and managed to put some time on them. Once we took the lead we never gave it up and continued to build a gap as the race went on. In the end we won the race by 15 minutes with a total of 11 laps (156.2 miles) in 12:33:09.
Matt
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