This is the Sabrosa Cycles team. (left to right; Ryan, Delena, Jon, Mark & Ben {not pictured is Sherry who was support for the team......who rocked!}) Despite Jon becoming violently sick during the night, me with some gnarly good lung butter sessions/fevers, the team did surprisingly well. We placed 5th out of 35 five person-coed teams and 65th out of all 385 teams that were registered. Not too bad considering. I give all credit to the rest of the team who carried my lame ass through. Good times!!! Now time to prep for the 24-Hours of Tucson in February.........on Single Speeds!!
Mark comin' in hot thru the chicanes and in to the "exchange" area. He exchanged off to me......then it was my turn to try not to lose all the time he had made up. By the way I was riding with a cold or flu (???) hacking up lung cookies left and right. Sunday morning I woke up at 4:00 a.m. from my nap, soaking wet with a nice cozy fever for my morning lap at 5 a.m..........now who says a 24-hour race can't be fun?
So to start the race, rather than having 500 people bangin' elbows falling on top of each other with a mass bike start, they started out with a run about 100 yards around a point back to the racks, grab your bike and then proceed to the course for your lap. It's pretty wild to watch a mad sprint before the race even starts........people were wearing dust masks because of the massive cloud of dust that was kicked up from the froth mouthed cattle stampede of rapid (possibly literally rabid) mountain bikers. Now that's a good time 'eh!!!
The tent in the background is where the "exchange" goes down. To get there you go through a few tight chicanes thru the chute and hand the baton to the time keep, then swipe your time badge. Your teammate then swipes his time badge, grabs the baton and runs to their bike waiting in the rack. It's cool......your just don't want to mess up and let the rest of the team down by losing the baton out on the course.
Ben out on Friday, before the race, pre-riding to see where he's gonna pass the people blocking his way to sweet victory.