The 2010 Dirty Dozen 12 hour race at Bluff Creek Ranch near Warda, TX happened this weekend, so now I have a solo 12 hour under my belt. And boy, was it one for the books! (results here)
Hats off to Luke for his awesome pit work, Charity’s friend Leslie for her help, and Charity, Alex, Steve, Yater and Rachel for riding through that slop for so long! We truly are Pigs, huh? And we brought home some awesome results too!

I pulled in Friday afternoon and suited up for a preride. The promoter asked me to ride the full loop and report the conditions back to him, so I did. The hayfield (farthest out) had a lot of standing water, and would have turned bad. The rest of the course wasn’t bad… a couple of mud holes here and there, and some slippery rooty water crossings, land bridges and short climbs, but not terrible.

Not terrible, but not good. I’ve seen that course when it’s fast, and this was as far as you could get from that. I took my “easy” gear (30×18) off the bike that night, and put on my “super-easy” gear (30×20). I was gambling that the course would get much worse, and that I’d need the extra leverage to keep moving at a steady pace over the soft ground. I had also taken my Kenda smallblock off the back, and replaced it with a Crossmark, reversed for better grippy traction.

On race morning, I felt pretty good. No beer and a decent bedtime helped with that. The LeMans start put me in the woods in the top 30 or so, and the train moved along pretty good. My lap time was around 35 minutes, plus a couple at the pit to swap bottles. Second lap saw more spacing on the trail, which made attacking the tricky spots easier. I had no idea how many solo 12 hour guys I was racing against, or how many singlespeeders, but there were a LOT of singlespeeders on the trail. Attitude was pretty good all around, and the weather was perfect, like Alex said. Nice and sunny, not too cold.

Fast forward a few uneventful laps, and the trail was changing. The open areas were actually firming up with the sun and wind and traffic, but the 300+ RACERS (record attendance!) were taking a big toll on the mudpits in the woods. And there were LOTS of those. Every time you’d find a slightly better, less soggy line around a mud bog, the bog would have grown to consume it by your next lap around. Those mudholes got BIG. There was no escaping them. Some could be ridden through with lots of effort, but some just sucked all momentum and turned your front wheel off track.

One special moment of my day was around the halfway point, and is visible in my lap times. I had some pretty severe indigestion, and had to spend about 10 minutes in the portajohn. It was not pretty. I felt MUCH better after that though! (BIG THANKS to Luke for sending me with paper towels in hand, as the TP was long gone.) A word on my nutrition now… I was drinking one bottle per lap (6.3 miles, 40ish minutes) of Gu20 with a Gu pack in each bottle, plus 1/4 of a PBJ and/or a big pull of Old Man Milk every other lap or so. I may have not been getting enough electrolytes, or may have been pushing too hard, because I started getting decent cramps around lap 5 or so. I backed off the pace some and started popping 2-4 Endurolytes after every lap, and the cramps disappeared. Something about the mixture may have contributed to the indigestion, but I’m not sure. I’ll have to see if I can experiment and isolate the problem(s).

Once the sun started losing power, the wetness got worse. The mudpits in the woods got unbelievably bad. I hope somebody got a picture of them… they were very long, very wide, and very deep. I ended up walking some of them in my last lap or 3 because I just didn’t have the energy to fight them anymore. Same thing with some of the tricky rooty climbs… they were just too much at the end of the day. Even the open field areas seemed to get slower and wetter, and took a lot of determination to keep moving across.

Note: riding with two Darkstars on the helmet kicks total ass (I had a loaner plus mine). 2400 lumens of lycra melting power! It probably ruined the vision of everyone who passed me at night! The team racers were still keeping a decent pace, and I got passed a lot during my three night laps. I went into “please don’t let that be a rider in my class” mode when someone was gaining on me, and that kept me moving pretty well. My lap times had dropped from 45ish minutes down to 55 minutes, but it was due to fatigue and mud, not light. My 15th and final lap was a continuing mantra of “That’s the last time I have to ride THAT mud pit… that’s the last time I have to climb THOSE roots…” etc. etc. I finished my last lap at 12 hours and 30 minutes, and the only solo singlespeeder ahead of me crossed the line about 10 minutes later, one lap up. I had spoken to him early in the day, but hadn’t seem him again since. Nice guy. He raced sport class though, so he wasn’t ranked in the same standings as me.

The two solo experts ahead of me each had 17 laps, so I didn’t have a way to move up any further. I don’t think I left much on the table. My pit stops were pretty short, and the bathroom stop was mandatory. I may have been able to shave a few minutes here or there, but not the 40+ it would have taken to catch the 1st place singlespeeder, Joshua.

Can I say how awesome it is to have the support and camaraderie of the Big Pig racing team? Coming around that last corner, dinging my bell to announce my arrival, and hearing all present Pigs yell “PORKCHOP!” is incredible.
You didn’t hear anyone, anywhere on the course, yelling “GO MUTUAL HEALTH CARE SLASH HERLIHY AUTO SALES TEAM!” No sir.
You heard, all the way around the course, at full volume, by people you didn’t even know…

GO BIG PIG!

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