2011 24 Hours of Great Glen

For the sixth time in the past seven years I returned to Pinkham Notch on the second weekend of August for yet another run at the 24 Hours of Great Glen. As was the case last year, my regular 2-man teammate Todd was spending another summer working on his new house and lacked the free time needed to train. Also like last year I didn't quite feel up to trying my hand as a solo competitor, so I joined a 4 man sport squad. Unlike last year where I raced with 3 randoms, this year I joined forces with my regular riding crony Curtis Lavoie, along with his friend from PA Francis Cuddy, and Temple NH's own force of nature/XC skier/road rider/trail runner Bob Treadwell.

Curt and Francis had coined the name 'Team Awesome!' as a spoof of the many 'extreme' and 'epic' type team names they had seen toiling at the back of the pack with matching jerseys at other races. We didn't have matching race jerseys, but courtesy of The Bride we did have matching t-shirts.

Sunday morning and still no rain.

A couple of weeks before the race Bob found out he had an unavoidable business trip the weekend of the race. Fortunately his son Bobby was ready and willing to fill in for him. This punted me clearly into the role of "old guy" on the team. And while Bob didn't have a lot of experience on a mountain bike, he was a veritable grizzled veteran compared to Bobby, who had all of 20-30 rides ever under his belt on race day. Potentially more worrisome was Bobby's choice of bike: A fully rigid 29er singlespeed with rim brakes. Having ridden a few times with Bobby I wasn't too concerned though, while still figuring out the finer points of technical riding, he could climb like an elevator and never seemed to get tired or discouraged.

Francis exits the plunge.
He's too big to ride this fast, but he does.

As always the weather was a concern; a lot of rain preceding the race and/or during the race makes for an "interesting" time. This year fate was kind, the course was dry and it only rained at the very end. The Bride and I headed up Friday night and setup our campsite then headed over to Gorham for the night. Being old I wanted to sleep in a real bed and take a hot shower before the race began.

In the weeks leading up to the race Curt and I had joked that we planned to win the sport class and take out as many expert teams as possible. He was feeling a bit ill the week before Great Glen and skipped the Top Notch Triathlon the week before to save himself, "for the race that matters" (This is an exact quote, exactly as I remember it at any rate).

Yup, he has a cotton shirt, a fully rigid singlespeed, and rim brakes.
Didn't matter.

Suffice it to say we were talking a lot of smack. When I saw that the number 2 and 3 sport teams from last year were registered I began to have my doubts. When the number of sport teams grew to 32 my doubts increased; that's a lot of teams to beat. When we showed up Saturday morning my doubts grew further yet. So many bad-ass looking racers, so many shaved legs, so many matching jerseys. How the hell could we beat these guys? We certainly didn't look like a contender, me with my Elvis Costello glasses and long travel trail bike, Bobby with cotton T-shirts, Walmart-special-looking ride and practically no riding experience, and Francis, well Francis had a great bike and appropriate kit, but he's 6'6" and 240lbs. No way a guy that big was going to survive multiple 8.3 miles laps with 1000' of climbing per lap. No way. Simply not possible. Admittedly Curt did look like he sort of belonged. He's got a giant tattoo, a Ti hardtail, and lots of fancy jerseys, but come on, those thick glasses...he's going to fog up an crash at 3:00 am.

I kept my doubts to myself, because everyone else seemed confident. I dispensed what little wisdom I'd picked up from doing this race previously. Mainly that advice was: Don't blow yourself up on the first lap and the race is won at night with consistent laps. Not sure if anyone was listening, not sure if it was even good advice, but I felt better saying something :-P

With my bum ankle we decided someone else should take the first lap. Since Bobby was on a singlespeed it didn't make much sense for him to go first and get caught up in the cattle call that is lap one. So first out duty fell to Francis, Curt was #2, Bobby was in the three spot, and I was last.

Curt on one of his early laps.

Noon. The cannon fires and 182 teams (including 12 hour teams and solos) started their running lap around the pond for the LeMans style start. Francis came through in the first quarter of racers and headed out on his Yeti Big Top. And then we waited.

The first racer in was from the sole pro team, coming in at a blistering 39:27. More riders came in each passing minute. Francis rolled in with a 47:10, putting us in 32nd position overall. I wasn't too worried though because we hadn't sent out our fastest guy first and sure enough when Curt turned a 41:32 lap we jumped to 19th position overall. Bobby's lap was 43:53 and brought us to 16th overall. Finally I got to head out and feeling good laid down a 42:27 which brought us to 11th overall and 2nd in the sport class.

The course was the usual mix of fast carriage road, rocky double track, and single track, with 100' of tarmac thrown in for good measure. It's fast, but you aren't going to win it on a cross bike, there's enough technical stuff to keep that from happening. There were a few reroutes, including the addition of a long switchback climb to the top of the plunge, which previously was a straight shot up the fall line. All-in-all if felt very familiar and it was easy to fall into a rythym (as well it should be given how many times I've raced here).

Yours Truly on the way to the top of the plunge.
The RIP 9 may not be the lightest bike, but it climbs like a champ and descends better.

Our gains on the overall came a bit slower after that but by the start of lap 10 we had moved into a narrow lead in the sport class and 6th overall. It didn't last long though as John Creedon from team 'Sucker Punch' threw down a 45:59 for lap 11, putting us almost 3 minutes back. Fortunately it's a team event, and as darkness fell, Sucker Punch's next rider managed only a 49:40 to my 44:23 (thanks in no small part to my ridiculous Niterider Pro 700 and Light & Motion Stella 600 which make keeping the pace in the dark a whole lot easier). We now had a 3 minute lead on Sucker Punch and 7 minute lead on Pure Adrenaline in third. We were still worried about Creedon's team, as has was clearly faster than any of us, but they were sending him out for double laps from the start of the race, which eventually had to take it's toll. We were committed to putting a fresh rider on course every lap and turning consistent lap times.

Through the night this strategy paid off, our fastest nighttime lap was 43:30 and our slowest was 48:32. By sunrise we had a 1 hour lead on Sucker Punch and 27 minute lead on the new 2nd place sport team, Team Adrenaline. Dumb luck played a part too of course; we had no serious mechanical issues and no crashes.

I knew what I was capable of and having ridden a lot with Curt he was delivering what I expected, but as the night wore on I was continually amazed at Francis and Bobby. How a guy as big as Francis continues to hit those climbs as fast as he did I'll never know. Bobby meanwhile decided he'd had enough of his rigid singlespeed with rim brakes, so upgraded to Curt's back up a bike, *another* singlespeed, this one had disc brakes though. If this kid decides to take up mountain bike racing watch out (I think Bobby doubled his lifetime mtb mileage during the race).

When the sun came up we knew it was our race to lose. When Francis headed out for lap 25 at 6:52 we were in 4th overall, with the sole Pro team, one expert team, and a 5 person team ahead of us. We went into crazy consistency mode, with our next 7 laps ranging from 46:37 to 47:53. When Bobby finished lap 31 at 11:34 am we knew we had won sport.

FEMA tent.

But let's back up a little. With the new rules this year we didn't need to have a racer on course at noon. We could call it a day at 11:34 and we knew that it would be impossible for any other sport team to get another rider out in time to attempt a 32nd lap. We clarified this with the race administrators, but I felt a bit guilty. The rest of my team had each done 8 laps, who was I to do only 7? While we thought about what to do it started to rain. Really hard. I didn't come to race to race the 23 Hours and 34 minutes of Great Glen. So when we spotted Bobby across the field I knew I was going out one more time.

It's all over, so we can smile now.

It was a formality and I didn't take any chances. I walked twice for the first time in the race, at the top of the first climb across the bridge and down the plunge at the end. I wasn't entirely sure if I crashed out here and DNFed if we would still be ruled the winners, so I played the slow-by-easy card. It was a bit disappointing to break the 50 minute mark for our team, but discretion, valor and all that.

Fastest laps? No. Consistent laps? Yes

As usual the awards took too long, with useless raffles and too many classes (e.g. Sport ;-). How the solo competitors didn't run from the tent screaming "I'M REALLY @!#$% TIRED AND WANT GO TO SLEEP!!!" I'll never know.

Not sure if this group will be back next year. If the other guys want to defend I'm game, or maybe I'll finally try my luck as a solo.