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Instead of heading west to race the Joe Martin Stage race, I went with Andrea for her first mountain bike race. Rather than go small, a little 2-3 hour jaunt, she wanted to start out at Dirt, Sweat, and Gears 12-hour race in Fayetteville, Tenn.

The plan was camp out and for Andrea to race DSG, solo on her new Niner Jet9. I brought my road bike along so I could go out on a road ride at some point during the day. I emailed Kevin Freeman (promoter of Beat the Freak cx series) and he sent me a good route. So we loaded up the car with all the gear and headed east.

Friday night was a bit windy, but otherwise the weather was good. In the pre-race fesitvities, they rigged up a road frame with 20″ wheels and had a time-trial contest over the grassy area where the start/finish would be the next day. Andrea lined up in the group right away and posted a pretty good early time (57 seconds?). The big issue was that bottom bracket height was so low that the pedals were constantly hitting the ground… I went a bit later and managed to post up a time in the high 40′s… The best time ended up being in the mid-30′s. It was all about technique and my start was less than awesome as I barely got going at first until I figured out how to make that bike go.

before

The next day, the weather was supposed to turn rainy… The prediction came true about 2 minutes before the shotgun lemans start. The first lap had the leaders coming around in about an hour, which was expected. The amateurs however, really ended up being stretched out… In fact, by the time Andrea came by the tent after completing lap 1 and doing a bike wash, 2:25 had passed.

It turned out the rain had turned the course to a muddy slog that involved a lot of pushing the bike along… The weather was improving and the sun came out. So after she started on her 2nd lap, I geared up and went out for a ride. It was sunny for the first two hours of my hilly road ride, and then it started raining again, this time for about an hour.

Out on course, the rain, then sun, and then rain again turned the course into sticky peanut butter mud. When I rolled back into the campsite (from my road ride), about 4 hours had passed and Andrea had not came through again… What she was doing was pushing, carrying, and dragging her 80-100# bike through the ups and downs of the 10 mile course…. After a while, she came back to the camp, but hadn’t yet completed the lap yet since it was slow going (one could leave the course as long as you went back to the same place).

Her bike was pretty well encased in mud.

She came back to get to get my road bike… She wasn’t allowed to just run the trail without a bike, but she could take a change and my Felt at ~17#, was much lighter than her 27# Jet9, and easier to shoulder.

Even with the road bike, it took her another hour or so to cover the rest of the course. A photographer got a photo of her riding across the finish line. She did it at the urging of the announcer….

Here are a bunch of photos from the start and a few from the middle of the race….