24HoGG

Camp setup on Friday afternoon. Miraculously my $25 tarp shade would survive the night this year.

Well, it's over. The 2007 24 Hours of Great Glen are in the books. After last years 4th place Todd and I had dared think of a podium spot this year. Regrettably it was not to be and I must take the blame. A new job and home expansion cut into training this year, but not so much that we couldn't have done better than our 7th place in the men's pairs this year. The thing that killed us was a rookie mistake on my part, electrolyte imbalance.

The Bride and I's glamorous hotel room. New job pays enough to not sleep in tent Friday night. Still slept like poop and woke up at 5:00 am.

Last year we just alternated laps the whole race, except when we each went out for two night laps to allow the other racer to sleep for an hour. Noticing that all the teams ahead of us were doing multiple laps we thought we should do the same too. It worked well for the first 9 laps. We were in the 6th spot and feeling good, knowing that night would bring a host of problems for many teams (hopefully some in front of us). But on the end of lap 9 my left hamstring just went bezerk, cramping horribly. I went out for a tenth lap, but finished that in a glacial 1:25:18.

Ready to roll under a dry blue sky.

Campmates, team 'Still No Faster'. They lived up to their name :-D In fairness Chris did the fastest individual lap of our two teams, a tidy 48:12. Of course there were *FOUR* of them!

That was it for me for a while. My left hamstring would cramp if I even so much as bent my leg. I thought about dropping out, figuring there was no way it was going to come back to life without a full meal and good night's sleep. My "epic" lap had dropped us to 10th position.

"What'd you get?"
"Decoder ring, you?"
"Fake tattoos."

"Think the mandatory meeting will start late this year?"
"Yup."
"Think they will just tells us what we already know?"
"Yup."
"Think people will leave before it's over?"
"Yup."
"You ever say anything but 'Yup'?"
"Nope."

Todd of course just said he'd go out and see what he could do. He did two more laps which got us to 1:12 am, but he was hurting too. This was the low point of the race for me. My leg was still all screwy and riding was out of the question. I considered just pushing the bike around for a lap and maybe rolling down the flats. But that seemed rather pathetic, and feeling rather pathetic and wallowing in self-pity I couldn't bring myself to do it.

Arty-farty juxtaposition of synthetic and natural mountains.

Todd tries his luck at the ancient Chinese bike puzzle...

...hmmm, trickier than it looks...

"Out of my way fool!"

"See, it's easy!"

"I am Todd-Lor. I come to wage war on your puny and insignificant planet. Even now my battle cruisers have trained their plasma cannons on your major cities! Your only hope is to bring me your finest popcorn. Now hurry you sniveling dogs, don't force me to demonstrate my fleet's firepower on Manchvegas! Because I WILL SO DO IT"

So we decided to catch a few Z's and see how we felt in a few hours. Before sleeping I downed a few electrolyte pills and ate a box of Annie's Shells and Cheddar. Todd got back out sometime in the dark as I slept away with my guilt ridden dream, and proceeded to do three straight laps, nothing fast, but somehow during the night we managed to crawl up to the 7th spot.

For the benefit of people like my mom, this is the battery charging station. It's where, well, we charge our light's batteries between laps. I have nothing funny to say about it. Sorry, batteries just don't lend themselves to humor.

The cattle queue up for the start.

Todd follows my sage advice for this year's Le Mans start: "Run faster"

Todd-Lor contemplates calling in an orbital strike to thin out the pack.

Riders hoof it up the first climb on lap 1.

TM rails the plunge.

Max roars out of the start/finish area. Alas my alter ego would soon falter, and pitiful Paul would soon return clutching his left hamstring.

By this time I had gotten my sorry butt out of bed and was stuffing myself with food and more electrolyte pills. The leg started to feel a lot better. I went out for another lap and was able to do a 58:50, the leg was getting a little suspect so Todd went out for another after me.

Max Power is so fast he can barely be caught on film. Or possibly Scorpion #1 doesn't know how to operate the camera. Honestly, at first I thought this was some cool pan and blur shooting technique. Until I saw that all the other pictures she took were blurry too. Unless they were of Todd, those were all fine, in crystal clear sharp focus. I heard her muttering something about, "you look better blurry". Not sure what that means.

Still feeling fine and cruising to a 51:12 first lap.

Looking over the selection of sport beverages, it dawns on me, "blue" is not a flavor.

Do I like to wear my helmet at a jaunty angle? Or is my head just not symmetrical? The latter sadly.

Todd got back at 11:08 am. I headed out for the last lap. The power of your last lap is great, knowing you don't need to go back out lets you lay it out and not worry about saving anything. Of course when you haven't trained enough, laying it out only results in a 56:49 lap, but hey, I'll take it.

Haircuts like these just don't happen people, it takes preparation, poor grooming, and hours of helmet wearing. Giant Elvis Costello glasses complete the look.

We can all smile now that it's over.

So we held onto the 7th spot in the end. A tantalizingly small gap of 1:26 separated us from the 6th spot. Sorta wished I'd known we were that close before the final lap. Of course then I would be killing myself for *6th* place and that does seem rather pathetic!

The Bride says: "Ride faster next year you maggots, 7th place is unacceptable!"

So while it could of been worse, I must say I finished the race pretty disappointed. I had fun, the bike didn't give me any serious problems (aside from the front brake squealing like the proverbial pig for the whole race), but can't help but feel I didn't do my best. Not sure exactly what went wrong with the leg, it could just be a case of O-L-D. The lack of training miles compared to last year wasn't helping certainly. Or maybe just doing 2-2 alternating laps got me out of my eating and drinking rhythm. Whatever the case we'll be back next year if the fates allow.

This brings me to my parting random thoughts on this year's race:

1) Soloists are crazy right? So what does that make the single-speed soloists? I'm not sure, but kudos to both groups, it's a tough race when you are alone *are* the team, gears or not.

2) The weather - Three straight years I've done this race and three straight years the weather has been great. Why do I feel like we're due a monsoon come 08?

3) Peter Ostroski - Damn this kid is amazing. Two years ago his Red Jersey two man team just crushed everyone. This year he won the overall solo title with 24 laps. And he is still in the 0-18 age group. Yikes.

4) Even more impressive is Melanie Brown, winning her second women's overall solo title. Amazingly she beat all the men but Peter. Nice job.

Until next year...

ptb