Belated Burn 24 Hour report

Early in the year I talked Chad into doing the duo category at the Burn 24 Hour. Seemed like a fun idea at the time. He had never done a 24 hour race and i had only attempted a duo once at the 24 hrs of Adrenalin in Conyers around 2004. I made it to around 2am before i climbed in the tent with B and called it quits (B went on to finish solo). Fast forward to May 27th...Chad, Andrea, and I are riding Mad Max style in the Cane Creek work truck down I-40 headed to Wilkesboro to set up camp and pre-ride. I don't have any pics of the course but it didn't seem so bad. Some climbing, lots of roots, some fun downhills. Afterwards, we headed to Amalfi's Italian Restaurant and discovered the best reason to ever go back to Wilkesboro...Beer in a boot.

Beer dranked, we called it a night and headed back to camp. Saturday dawns and I finally talk Chad into doing the lemans start AND the first two laps. Awesome. From there on we were 2 laps on, 2 laps off. The small hills on the course suddenly seemed bigger, and the roots were super slick and massive.

Chad stayed calm and collected. I, on the other hand was mentally and physically all over the place from lap 1 until my last lap. One lap would suck, the next would be great. That continued most of the night. Chad didn't break down until around 1am i guess. Thank dog, i couldn't believe how easy he was making it seem considering he had just come off the couch a month earlier.

I thought we would settle into a nice groove and churn out moderate laps. Turns out we were actually racing, and had been for 13 hours, something i wasn't completely expecting. After looking back at our lap times we had consistently ridden mid to high 40 minute laps for the first 12 hours. 50 + minute laps didn't come until after midnight and even then they were only 5 minutes or so off the pace of most of our day laps. That explains why the pace felt so hard.

Around midnight we were in 8th or 9th place out of 15 teams. By 7am we had moved up to 4th, 30 minutes out of 3rd place. This was good and bad. Good because we had dominated through the hardest part of the race to move up, bad because with sunrise, I had also expected to ease off. Andrea talked me off a cliff a couple of times when I was mentally thrashed and we pushed on through to the finish. We never caught 3rd, so 4th place it was and we were happy with that. 28 laps total, 208 miles. Hardest race i've ever done.

What do we have here??? 7'ish on Sunday morning.


Like a boss...click to get the full effect.


Finishing the 6:30 -8am shift



Me: this course can eat a dick. Chad: yawn. I just had a nap, a hot dog, and a pack of nutter butters.


Mr. Happy off again. Very Nice!



Low point of the race for me. Lap 12 of 14. Sleep deprivation mixed with racing is a bitch.


Finishing up.



Done.


Interesting tidbits...evidently Chad has a son (see pic below). They met for the first time at Amalfi's. You'll have to ask him about that one. Chad's nipples also instantly chafed on the first lap. He wore band-aids over them from lap 2 till the finish. I have pictures but only for the right price.


Also, putting a portable grill together 30 minutes before the start is not the best use of time.

Thanks to Andrea for being Directeur Sportif for the weekend. Not only did she get us a boss pit site, she stayed up all night making sure we were ready to go when it was time. Thanks also to Kel and Josh for cooking and generally keeping up with all our shit and having it ready when we needed it.

That is all, thanks for coming.