3-Man 105+ Results:
9 Hours of Cranky Monkey
I really enjoyed this race in 2010, so I signed up early to do it again in 2011. DCMTB had a big presence with 5 teams. I was a little unsure of my form, considering I had just been in Europe for 10 days and only did one major 50-mile ride in Berlin, so I asked to go last in the rotation. The weather looked really unpromising, with a forecast of rain and dark and cloudy skies at the start. By some crazy act of God, the race area never got rained on--although we know that some locations 5 miles away got drenched.
Start
Mike started us off, having to do the run. We found out that Mike is not a very fast runner. He was able to pass some people on the singletrack, and Joel went out next. My first lap I felt pretty good, but wasn't quite hitting some of the lines that I wanted to. To my surprise when I came back, I saw I'd actually gotten the fastest time on our team.
Rest of the Race
I was pretty stoked to have negative splits on my next 2 laps. The course seemed to suit me well, with the fast flowy sections and then the big climb in the middle where I could get into a rhythm. We ended up having a race on our hands, against the aptly named Two Wookies and an Ewok (the 2 dudes were like 6'5", while the last was about 5'4"). Since I was pulling pretty fast laps, I was actually bringing us back into the lead on my laps...then their fastest guy (the Ewok) would end up passing Mike on the climb.
Finish
So the race came down to the final lap. We were both going to be able to put out a third man on the course before the time cutoff. I was hoping that we would get the lead and then I could just maintain it for the win. Joel did a solid lap, but we still ended up down over a minute and a half from the other team. Mike gave one of his motivational speeches (aka yelling at me to go fast), and I went out full steam. I ended up catching up to Bill early in the course (I found out later he had wrecked because he pushed it too hard knowing that our team was right behind him). So once I was ahead, I knew I had to just keep it going and we could pull out the victory. Going down the big downhill, I ended up getting a slow-leaking flat. I jumped off the bike and used a CO2 to hopefully get enough air in there and get the damn tire home. It held, but just barely, and I kept my weight off the rear end of the bike. It was a pretty cool feeling coming into the finish having the whole DCMTB crew cheering me on.
| 1 | DCMTB-Mature not Old | Darren Biggs, Mike Klasmeier, Joel Wilson | 8:36:05 | 0:44:03 | 0:43:51 | 0:40:44 | 0:42:32 | 0:43:25 | 0:40:32 | 0:45:44 | 0:43:32 | 0:40:30 | 0:43:18 | 0:45:16 | 0:42:38 | ||||
| 2 | Two Wookiees and an Ewok | Daniel Tille, Chris Mayhew, Bill Schieken | 8:38:11 | 0:46:02 | 0:43:05 | 0:39:51 | 0:44:20 | 0:40:09 | 0:43:18 | 0:39:39 | 0:45:53 | 0:43:52 | 0:40:23 | 0:45:32 | 0:46:07 |
