DCMTB - 12 Hours of Cranky Monkey 2009 (-Alex)On Friday night Leland and I were discussing how unprepared we felt for this race. Neither one of us had ridden much, if any since Big Bear two weeks prior and we both still had some bike issues that remained to be ironed out after that brutal race. Mine it turned out was to remain wrinkled and I set out Saturday morning with just the Jamis Dragon 29 SS conversion in the back of the truck.
Leland took the Le mans start and had me a little worried as he came through the run lap and then the bike lap solidly placed within the top 10. I knew he'd mentioned to me he was afraid he'd go out to hard and blow up super early so I called out to him to settle into a comfortable race pace once they got to the trails. An hour later I was out for my first lap on the unfamiliar course.
Apparently showing Vinny how many laps I was gonna ride. I'd equate it to when Babe Ruth pointed to the outfield... Uh, yeah ok... or predicting our placement before my second lap...
The quantico trails were loaded with short but steep little climbs all over, especially (or so it seemed) towards the end of the lap. There was one large fire road climb I never even attempted after seeing SS vet Jonathon W walking it in front of me and then a couple of sharp, steep switchbacks that weren't worth the wasted energy. Otherwise I was able to climb mostly everything on the 33x19.
The 3 Person Coed on top of it all - #1 overall team! Woot!
My laps went very smooth and consistent; forced to ride the same gear I just settled in and went. I managed to keep my mind in the game and grind out the tiring climbs even through the last lap and kept my lap time consistent. First lap was a sub 1:02 and my last was 1:04.02 with the inner 2 laps being right around 1:03. Very nice. I'm convinced I'm better off on the single speed for races like this one; not too hard to accomplish on a single speed but hard enough I'd be rocking the granny gear way too much and spinning way too easily while I "raced".
For a while we were battling it out for 3rd place in the 3 man open category though we soon were shown the way to 4th by the home team, USMC that had had a 30 minute mechanical early on. We held on for 4th though and stood aside the podium, which went 5 deep, to collect our Pint Glasses.
2/5ths of the podium ain't bad. Even Cass got in on the action.In the end DCMTB rolled out with some hardware (or at least a number of pint glasses).
3 Person Coed - 1st Place (1st overall!)
3 Man Open - 1st Place (2nd overall!)
3 Man 35+ - 2nd Place (5th overall!)
2 Person Duo - 2nd Place (10th overall!) (split DCMTB/PVC team)
3 Person Coed - 6th Place
3 Man Open - 4th Place (13th overall)
Great race, tough venue and an excellent time!
All Pictures courtesy of Vince Gunville (except for the 1 he's in...) More here!
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