5th
The Toughest 48 Hours In Sport
39 hours and 41 minutes after leaving Santa Clarita, I arrived in Twentynine Palms.
There’s only one word that can adequately, and without hyperbole, describe this race.
Epic.
I will post a more thoughtful summary after I’ve had a chance to collect my thoughts, but here are some glimpses into what makes this race great.
- Death Valley is hot. Mojave is hot. And I mean hot. Really hot. This year, the temperatures were incredibly cool. I can’t imagine doing this race in the blistering heat that they’ve had in prior years.
- Death Valley is windy. I rode into a straight headwind of 40 miles per hour for almost 9 hours. At one point a strong gust literally stopped my bike as I descended a small rise in the road. I weigh almost 200 pounds, it takes a lot of wind to stop me.
- Most of the roads are awesome. The roads in the last 100 miles are not. My hands are a numb, blistered mess. I can barely move my fingers. Potholes, chiptop, you name it. We rode on some of the worst pavement I’ve seen in a bike race. There’s something disconcerting about descending 10 miles on pavement that hasn’t been tended to.
- The people are awesome. All the racers, crew, event staff. Everyone was friendly, helpful and fun to be with.
We’re packing up the van now for our trip back to L.A. Tonight we’ll probably go to Alejo’s and tomorrow might just be spent in the hot tub, with a red-eye back to Toronto tomorrow evening. I’ll gather up the pictures, video and story and post something coherent here.
As much fun as I had, I’m glad its over. :-)
Posted at 13:57 - Comments (View)
