I finished it! I feel like I should thank my sponsors… my wife and kids for letting me ride, my moto buddies for encouraging (taunting) me to try it, Robert and Chad for being an awesome pit crew, Chris @ Pocatello Power Sports for the deal on my awesome KTM bike, without their support, I never could have come in 166th place out of 307 starters! Seriously though, probably the most physically demanding thing I’ve ever done and it was an awesome sense of accomplishment to cross that finish line.
Race Details: this year it was 125.5 miles, started and ended in Idaho City, ID. Almost all single track, see map and elevation profile below, if you weren’t climbing, you were descending with your brakes locked up.
Here’s my stats:
40+ B Class – 8th Place out of 24, Bronze Medal
Overall B Class – 29th Place out of 116
Overall Long Course – 166th out of 307 total riders (there were 123 DNF’s!)
My Starting minute: 10:46am, crossed the finish line at 6:40pm
Crew stats:
Brock – 1st Place and Gold Medal in the 30+ A Class! (although there is a scoring error, they didn’t check him in after the finish at the bike impound, they’re working on fixing it)
Brandon – 40+ A Class, 8th Place and Silver Medal! Barely missed the Gold Medal by 27 seconds
Rich and Chase – followed some bad arrows and ended up “houring-out”
Photo Album: https://www.flickr.com/photos/alhill/sets/72157644995185742/
Things I learned:
- Do NOT make adjustments to bike before the race, I adjusted my rear brake in the garage before loading up. Ended up too tight and it got hot and locked up my rear wheel in the middle of the first special test. I had to pull out my tools to adjust it so it would release, took probably 5-8 minutes or so. A ton of people passed me, my time in that ST was horrible and I came in 6 minutes behind on the first check.
- Simple math is hard when you’re exhausted. If you miss your time on one check, you have to adjust all the other times by the differential. I ended up 35 minutes off my original time sheet.
- Drink a lot. I went through two full camelbaks and added more water at each stop and still didn’t get enough.
- Cramps suck! I started getting them with 45 miles left to go, in weird places too.
- I only went over the bars once, I was right on a guy’s wheel on a nasty descent and it was too dusty to see the ruts, got crossed up and ended up superman style with my bike on top of me. Worst part was that both my legs decided to cramp up while I was sliding down the hill… haha, ouch!
