12 Hours of Temecula

Last year Mark "Nails" Johnson (yes, its Johnson. No matter what he might say, his last name is spelled J-o-h-n-s-o-n, like Johnson & Johnson, the makers of baby wipes) decided to be ambitious and do some early season racing. We duo-ed 12 hours of Temecula and then 24 hours in the 'ol Pueblo down in Tuscon, AZ.

Needless to say, we did pretty well in both races. I mean, you can only imagine what happens when you combine Nails' raw speed with my endless giddy excitement and enthusiasm that seems to come out during these stupid (and yes, I mean stupid. Any bicycle race longer than 2 hours is STUPID) endurance races.

Either way, after last year I was determined not to do any more early season racing. I was ready to take a nice easy winter and keep it low key until the first I-Cup race in March.

However, as you may or may not know, I am a sucker for peer pressure. Especially when the phrase "unless you aren't tough enough" is utilized.
Which is exactly what Calvin used to talk me into doing the 12 hours of Temecula...solo...in January. Yeah, go figure.

I did a good job of keeping the training low key so as to not peak in the first month of the year, but there is still something just wrong about having one of your longest races of the season be in January. Just sayin'

So the four of us, Calvin, Darren (Calvin's training partner), Kyle (yeah, he got talked into it too), and I drove down last week. We left Thursday, drove through some seriously crappy weather and made it to Vegas the first night. Calvin had a good friend who was nice enough to let the four of us weirdos stay at his place for the night. We then drove the rest of the way to rainy southern California.

Now I don't know if you've been following the news, but apparently there has been some serious precipitational issues down there lately. We're talking floods and land slides. So of course it makes perfect sense to drive 10 hours to go race mountain bikes in it. Perfect sense...

We set up our tents in the sporatic rain and tried to get a bit of a pre-ride in. Between the rain and the oncoming dark we got about a mile into the course then turned around. Still hoping the rain was going to let up for the race the following day.

Well we slept a bit that night, but between the rain and a certain individual's obnoxiously loud snoring (I'm not gonna name any names. Mostly cause it might have been me) not a lot of sleep happened.

However, as the sun popped out and Saturday got started, not a cloud could be found in the sky. The course dried out nicely, the weather warmed up and it ended up being a perfect day on the bike.

I went out a little hot like always, but managed to "cool the engines" before burning all my matches and settled into a nice steady eddy pace.

All in all it ended up being a jolly day. No GI issues, nutrition worked out well, pit stops ran smooth and the legs lasted the whole day. Not bad for January.

Nothing better than a whole day to ride your bike.