12 Hours of Mesa Verde

A little bit behind on this one. A week ago, I drug my poor mom to Cortez, Colorado so I could partake in the 12 Hours of Mesa Verde on a 2-person team with my good friend, and fellow Kenda sponsored rider, Tom Wehe. After 15-ish hours in the car, we finally arrived at Tom's house in Durango. An exhuasting drive to say the least (and did I mention this weekend was the weekend before finals for me???? Yeah......dumb move on my part.......). We woke up bright and early for this one for the 7am start. I of course got "roped" into doing the run (ha, ha, little did Wehe know I would get him back later.......), but it was kinda nice, cuz it was the coolest temperatures we would see all day on the bike. The race was pretty much sold out, so it allowed for ALOT of people on the course at one time. I of course managed to get myself stuck behind some guy who refused to let anyone get by......there were about 10 of us in a line behind him, and the course was 16.5 miles of singletrack, this was gonna be a long lap. Finally he faultered, and we all got by. I rolled in from my first lap, passed off the batton, and it was time to "rest". This is the part of the race I was unsure of.....I am used to just continuing on to the next lap, and the next one, and the next one. Wasn't sure how my legs were going to react to this one. My second lap came along, and needless to say, it was a little rough getting the legs going again. Both Tom and I proved to be pretty consistent with our lap times. We shuffled positions in the race a bit (we were 12th for a while, then 7th, then 9th). After my 3rd lap, my back was killing me, and so was my shoulder. I think it was all the stress I have been going through with school, but nonetheless is killed me. Upon returning from my 3rd lap (our 5th as a team), I had to fill Tom in on the fact that he not only was going to be doing his 3rd lap, but consecutively a 4th for him (payback time for the run thing....). Don't think he was too happy with me at this point! I did however prepare myself to go back out, just in case. While waiting in the transition area, he managed to somehow come right in and go back out, I had no idea.......but I was SO relieved!

Anyways, Tom returned from his 4th lap exhausted, and I felt really bad cuz I hadn't seen him come through the transition area before that lap. Ultimately, we came in 10th. Not quite what we had hoped for, but there were alot of 2 person co-ed teams, and this was our first shot at the 2 person team thing. On the positive side of things, we were super consistent in our lap times, and even better yet, my fastest lap time was 20 minutes faster than my fastest lap time here last year! Even my slowest lap this year was faster than my fastest lap last year. Next up, back to the solo thing on June 6th for the 24 Hours of Adrenalin race at Laguna Seca.