Hot August Nights 24 Hour Bike Race

Race time again at Albion Hills :) I've been racing on the coroporate team with Wescam for about 4 summers now (man time flies). I love going to these weekends. Such a great atmosphere and everyone there is there because they love riding and want to have a good time. What more can you ask for.

Well this time was going to be a little different than usual with only one corporate team (10 person) entered (normally we have 2). Little too bad but what can you do. Summer time is busy for people (though really they should get their priorities straight, what could be more important than riding ;) ). The weekend at first wasn't looking to great weather wise either. Poor Chelsea and Paul headed up on the friday and got majorly poured on. I headed up on Sat morning this time. It poured on most of my drive up. I was wondering why I was putting myself through this wishing for awhile that I had been one of those who couldn't make it, but I couldn't pull out or I would be considered one of the "uncool" people according to Chris, who stated that it would be "uncool" to pull out at the last minute (lol). Too much pride I guess.

Amazingly though (well considering I prayed almost the whole way up that this rain wasn't hitting Albion Hills) it wasn't raining there :) But of course that would change later :P I was the 4th person to show up at 10:30am and the race was starting at 12pm. Slowly more of our team trickled in. We started with 6 people at 12 (oh dear, lol), but later 2 more of the guys showed up and one on Sunday morning (for the good weather...wus...lol).

Definantly a lot less people at this race overall. Alot of last minute back outs...scared of getting wet??? The rain came halfway through my teamate Chelsea's lap (poor girl, the one thing she hoped wouldn't happen) and did it come down for awhile...of course I was after her so here I was getting ready in this miserable weather (but at least it was still fairly warm out) thinking this sucks and I was definantly not all that excited about going out for my lap. It rained for the beginning of my lap and then cleared up but unfortunatly it left alot of the roots very slick. I was off my bike a lot more then I normally am, which kind of sucked but what can you do. Otherwise the lap felt pretty good. Apparently the laps were about 16.5 km. The only unfortunate part was they had put the S16 single track in and let me tell you I hate S16. It is very technical. Needless to say I walked quite a bit of it. There was no way I was breaking any bones right at the end of the lap (this time anyhow :P). I had done quite a bit of praying beforehand to God about coming home with nothing broken...as you'll find out in a bit, apparently I needed to be a wee bit more specific, lol.

Oh the one great thing about us just being the one team this time was we snagged the best camp spot in the whole place. It was awesome! We had such a good view of a section of the trail (which is normally near the end but they changed the course all around this time). And oh man was there carnage here this time! There's this bridge just down a bit which is normally fine, but from all the rain it had spread quite a bit of sand as well on it. Well the first guys from the first lap came speeding through and one after another they wiped out right into the side of the wooden bridge! One guy even broke one of the posts! So for the next hour you heard various people (till first aid showed up) yelling, "Slippery bridge! Slow Down!" Finally Shawn (one of the coordinators) put up a big sign that said that...of course then we joked that he needed another sign that said, "Watch out for sign that says, Slipper bridge...." as the thing was sticking half out into the trail, lol. He wanted to make sure it caught peoples attention as it is amazing how riders can miss numerous warning signs on the trail. So any how that was our excitement for awhile :)

Did a lot of hanging out inbetween. Had a nice massage from my wonderful massage therapist, Sam (whose been there every time I have, so I always go to her now...oh yeah the race provides the option to sign up with a massage therapist...very nice! Does cost though but at least they are there for that option).

So now to my second lap. It was early in the morning (cause yes I am a wus when it comes to riding at night...eventually I will do it) part of the dawn lap actually. It was such an awesome lap. I was going so fast this time as everything had dried up and I had somehow found my cornering back (hugging the corners closer) and everything was feeling great. I was barely getting tired and was flying up the hills. Everything was so good infact that I started going over the stuff that I walked in the S16 single track section....until I hit this one section (that I never do) and just went for it...next thing I knew was my body was being thrown off my bike and slammed, neck first, into a tree and then down to the ground. Groannn! Thank goodness there happened to be 2 spectators there and they grabbed my bike (which amazingly didn't break or anything) and made sure cyclists were aware of me and didn't ride over me. I had to lay there for a few minutes, making sure I hadn't broken a collarbone or anything else cause let me tell ya, I was flying fast through that trail so it ended up being quite a strong impact. I got up after a few minutes, got myself oriented and jumped back on my bike...hey, I only had like .5km to go! I wasn't quiting. Managed to get out of the single track, though proceded to walk a few more technical spots and rode the last bit in.

On my way back to the campsite I guess the shock of it all wore off and all of a sudden the pain started to hit me and I couldn't stop the tears from coming. I hated riding into the site like that but I could feel my neck starting to stiffen as well as my back and just wanted to sit or lay down. I think I scared people though when I got back because for some reason everyone decided to give me space for what seemed like an awful long time before someone came over to ask if everything was alright. I layed down for awhile to just rest. I had booked a massage though so I got up about 30min later, had something to eat and hobbled back over as I couldn't stand straight any more. The most amazing thing was nothing had broken but of course I prayed for that, but this is what I meant by being more specific, lol. As I was pretty stiff for the next couple of days and took about 2 full days to be able to lift my arm all the way up. Still a bit sore overall but amazingly almost no bruising either! God is amazing! Thanks for keeping me safe.

Found out later that poor Sab had also had a run in with the tree and broke his bike and hurt his leg and Trevor as well broke his fork and ran out of lights part way through his last lap. Everyone ended up taking off early on sunday and didn't stick around for the prizes or awards later. Sunday though ended up turning into a beautiful day! Just georgeous!

So except for a few mishaps the weekend was still a fairly good success. Our team came in 47 out of 89 teams in the corporate category thanks to the fast guys who are usually on the fast team, unlike me who just sticks to the fun team (not as bugged to do night laps then ;) ).

I realized that next year I probably won't be making either of the 24 hours as I will be away at the Sea to Sea but I think I can handle that, lol. (I added a bunch of pics of our campsite, riding, where I fell and my wound.)