5th place. tough day that was called short due to tornado warnings. rain/thunder hit around 6am'ish and was a complete downpour, crazy ass winds and lighting.
got to the safety of a water station only to find 60 of my 24 hour friends underneath. we hudled together for warmth, like a bunch of penguins.
JEFF KERKOVE has a more in depth write up - check out the link.
race was a tough one, the heat and humidity and the begining hit me pretty hard. had dehydration head aches pretty early in the day and then decided the night would be my time to make up time.
night came, i was feeling a lot better and i was making up time. i was feeling a lot better then i was durning the day - but i think it was the same for the others as well.
one clothing change brough sloane past me, then i caught him by the end of the lap. little did i know that the check out time on that lap would be the last one that counted.
went out around 5:30'ish and it looked like hell. i could see huge storms and the lighting lite the sky, but we were not getting rain, it was windy as hell and i couldn't hear no thunder.
15 minutes later, all hell broke loose. it was raining so hard i could only see 10 feet in front of me and i went as hard as i could because i feared getting hypotherrmia.
by the time i made it to the second check point, i was relieved. but not really. eddie was there, and eventually, nat, sloane and chris e all came in.
when they started the race back up, they said to go out in the order we came in. ya, right. we took off, i got to the front and eddie quickly passed me. he had a 9 minute gap on me at that time, so i let him go as i figured it was only fair.
that lap finished up, but i wanted to get back out. conditions on the trail were super crappy, sloppy, wet, slick. it was whistler 2005 all over again and i was loving it.
i passed eddie in the pits, and i made it to the end of the lap without him catching me. i had made it into the fourth spot.
then i find out the race orgaizers ended the race and that basically your lap out time at 5:30 was your finish time. not so great, because i felt like i was really coming on and that i race really well when the weather gets cruddy, but it was probably the most fairest thing they could of done at that point.
and hats off to eddie o who had a great race.
top 5 solo -
1. chris e
2. nat ross
3. mark hendershot
4. eddie o
5. ernesto
that's it - about to post some pics.
also, want to thank everybody who said hello or who cheered me on during this event. seemed like i had a lot of fans out there - thanks for the support.
sologoat out.
6 comments:
Sounds epic and crazy! Good job on slogging through it. See you at Moab?
Awesome ride man!
You looked great when I saw you on the first rocky section of the roughly 7am lap. I was the rider on the rig who said we were just talking about you as you came up behind us.
Bummer though that they lied about restarting the race and had us do a few laps for nothing.
Great job and DEATH to a very unorganized norba.
Dallas sigurdur
Nice ride Ernesto.
moab - probably not, unless something changes in the next month or so and i figure something out. logistics, other races, mechanic, etc... it's too much for my support crew...
ya, i wish it would of went the full 24 hours as i was starting to feel really good at that point when the weather and conditions got super bad. i seem to ride better in that stuff and i think it has a lot to do with me just wanting to stay warm and not freeze.
Great race Ernie. Who knows what would have played in those last two hours had been able to race them. It certainly was going to be a battle.
Next time,
Eddie O
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