Dawn to Dusk Mountain Bike Race

This past weekend, Wendy and I participated in the Dawn to Dusk mountain bike race at the McDowell Mountain Park here in Phoenix. If you haven't already figured it out, the race started at Sunrise and ended at Sunset. This is similar to a 24 hour race, but shorter.... about 10 hours long.

We decided not to camp since it was going to get a little too cold for us warm weather people. We work up early and headed to the race site. We had decided that Wendy would be doing the first lap, then I would do the next two, so when we got there, we went straight to the start/finish area where registration was and picked up our "stuff" - pretty much we got our race number, a punch card and water bottles.

Race started exactly at 7:19 AM - Sunrise - and off Wendy went. I got a ride from Jeff and headed for the Team area. Adrenalin - our mtb team - was all set up right next to the course with THE big bus, chairs, shade, work stands, tables, etc., etc., etc. WOW!!! This is the way to race!!!

Wendy finished her first lap and I took off around 8:35 AM. The plan was for Wendy to do single laps and me to do double laps until one of us got tired, and then we would change the plan. Everything went well, after 4 laps we were in 4th place out of 15 coed duo teams. We remained in 4th place pretty much until the last 2 laps, where we jumped to 3rd. We finished about 7 minutes behind 2nd place and 20 minutes behind 1st. Not considering we didn't intend to race, we were just "riding" and having fun.

Wendy did awesome all 3 laps (over 45 miles) considering she doesn't ride as much as she used to. I had a little trouble with cramps on the 5th lap, but was able to recover to finish the 6th lap. We ended up with 9 laps (about 138 miles) in just over 10 hours. We had a great time during the event and will probably do it again next year. Now it's rest and recover... OK, that was Sunday, now I'm back to normal training.

Kudos to Adrenalin Race Team - great bunch of people!! Oh, and to ESI, for the grips that are just awesome!!!

Next up.... Not sure yet, probably nothing until next year. Stayed tuned.