It was an amazing and hot weekend of racing @Chainbuster Racing’s 24 Hours of Iron Maiden. The best part of it for me was the amount of the Chainbuster team members, friends and family that showed up. With the recent loss of Teresa, everyone was focused on keeping going like she would have wanted us to. But it was hard too, and it was so great to have the rest of you around when we needed it the most.
We had a hard rain mid-week that made the trails perfect. Not too dusty, and super tacky. This course is fast, and fun and flowy. It does not have the punishing climbs most of our courses do. There are some rock gardens, and a little climbing but overall, this course is like a roller coaster.
I was extremely happy to be able to get Shea Corbitt with Body Restoration Therapy to come out and support our efforts during this madness. I met her when she was supporting the MS-450 fundraising rides to the beach. We have become adventure friends, and I was happy to have her be part of the Chainbuster team this weekend. She joined Team Rose at camp with a great campsite spot across from the registration tent. We had a cool creek at the back of our site, water, electricity, tents, hammocks, everything we needed to support our insane idea of fun ahead.
The park is beautiful. I have a favorite spot by Farley field that we walked to a few times. There is a dirt path that goes along the grist mill on the way out. It goes back to a dam, that has a locked gate on an aqueduct that feeds the mill from the top of the dam. It is serene back there. We went and smelled the mimosas, and watched a beaver play long enough to get a good video. Frogs were croaking and the water was full of turtles. It was really nice at sunset.
Camp culture is always one of my favorite parts of this event. It’s nice to take a lap around the camp site and stop and talk to folks. People offer you food their cooking, and everyone enjoys each other. At the same time, there are always racers coming through to cheer on.
Jennifer Braddock and I had raced the 24 Hour 3 Person Co-ed category with Flynn Whitehurst for the past 3 years. This year Flynn couldn’t make it, so we asked Derek Bixler to Join us. He was really excited about taking this one. Derek took the fastest lap for the team on our first lap with a time of 58:56. This was his first 24 hr race. This was also his longest ride ever. He also took the most laps for the team, completing our 19th lap at around 8am Sunday morning.
I pulled six laps for the team. I tried to set it up so Jenn didn’t have the hottest laps. Derek wanted them, so we split them. That was the plan. Fortunately for me, I got the sunset and the sunrise laps. Even though one of my laps was barely under 2 hours due to an alarm clock malfunction, we managed to get in roughly 209 miles of riding at over a 9 mph average pace. We always had one person on course, except for that extra 30 minutes of sleep I got.
The awards ceremony for the 24 hours was incredibly special. Roses were given along with trophies to the top podium spot in each category. The team members who got on the podium also held up a wood carving that is our team logo with a Rose in it. Coming together in those last moment was truly special.
#ridefortherose