30 hours = 8 hours of racing, 7 hours of driving, 6 hours of sleep

The Mohican 100. I remember reading a guy's review of it saying something like "at least once a mile you are like 'you have to be kidding me.'" Not an exaggeration.

It all started Friday night, heading down to Loudenville, Ohio. There is something to be said about the turnpike: it is fast. The trip was 145 miles that took 3.5 hours. There were no highways, and the roads that took me into town had Amish buggies on them for the last 50 miles. Not sweet.

I met a really nice guy at the oval on Wednesday. He was like "Hey you were at the wvmba race... you doing the Mohican? Do you have a place to stay?" His buddy Mike rented a 24 bed cabin. Awesome. This really worked out because my plan to camp would have quickly gotten ugly because at 2 or 3 am it was thundering and lightening like crazy.

Up at 5 am. The "continental breakfast" consisted of donuts and cinnamon rolls. It was like eating breakfast at a gas station. Im glad that I brought some bagels and nutella and peanut butter. It was weird, we had to drive to the start from the finish. Does that make sense? It started in downtown and they had the street shut down. The announcer was hyping up all the people that were there. It started by sprinting up a 4 or 5 minute hill. I was feeling ok, sitting like 10 place or so, in the first group. Floyd went flying past me, trying to get closer to the front. That was surreal.

Maybe 35 minutes into the race, still going too fast, we all got turned around and the tail end of the front pack flip flopped to the front (we all missed a turn and they didnt). The next 3 hours, I just tried to hold wheels through the 30 miles of singletrack. 30 miles of singletrack. Yes, 30 miles of singletrack.

I made note of when the cramps started, right around 5:30. If you start a sentence saying "right around the 6th hour of the race, I wasnt feeling too hot," you have problems. I said goodbye to Pflug, who was killing it despite having only a single shoulder due to a crash the previous weekend, and started my own pace for the last few hours.

My own pace included lots of granny gear. Lots of walking. Lots of pedalling on my heels or with my legs straight, not bending them at all. I need to find out if you can do permanent damage to yourself just pedaling through cramps, because I would have tried, but it really felt like something was wrong, and a single bike race isnt worth tearing a muscle or something. (I have no idea if this is possible, but it REALLY hurt.)

A few more hours of pain and I found my way to the last feed stop. "7.1 miles of singletrack to go buddy, you are doing great" I actually caught a trek/vw pro dude on this stretch. I dont know how, but I did. He then rode away from me as I cramped.

8:15ish
15th place

Things I realized during the race:
-I want lasik surger. Contacts suck. glasses suck.
-Grip shifts suck after 3 hours. I am going to put a trigger shifter on the right if I do another event. My shifter got so slippery that I wasnt able to shift as I pleased, and the amount of energy that it took to shift was more than just standing up and mashing the gear that I was in.
-Wes rules for spotting me a dope front wheel. For reals.
- some fast dudes are unhuman obviously. Some normal dudes are almost as fast as the unhuman dudes (gorski, pflug)
-landis was in the pain box when he passed me.
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