April 23, 2012
Recently I began work on a project for my personal blog and wrote this piece based on my solo race at the 2005 24 Hours of Big Bear. Given its topic I thought it might be neat to include it here as well. It has not been professionally edited, so for now you’ll just have to take the bad with the good.
A Fresh Start
by Jason Mahokey
It’s 2:45 a.m. You’ve been racing for almost 15 hours and you’re dead on your bike. You’re cold, wet, muddy and hungry. You approach your pit along the trail. You need a break and something to eat before you head out for yet another lap on that godforsaken race course.
You gingerly dismount your bike trying hard not to cramp. You feel your wet, sweat soaked, mud encrusted chamois pull at your tender bits as you hand your bike off to your buddy who has kindly agreed to wrench for you.
You want to quit. Bad! Your buddy senses this and tells you up front he will not let you quit. Although he does find a reason (most likely made up) to work on your bike for a few extra minutes while you get some of the hot soup that he has warming on the camp stove.
While you sit, your friend chats to you about the race, you grunt short one and two word responses wishing that he would just shut the hell up and let you close your eyes, to just let you be done. But he is wise, his annoying chatter keeps you awake, the soup he prepared gives you hot, salty nourishment and washes away the thick baby puke taste of sports drink that has coated your tongue for the past few hours.
Just as your body starts to relax and your eye lids start to close, your bike is miraculously ready. You plead for just a few more minutes, but your friend is having none of it. He could be home in a warm bed sleeping instead of under a pop up tent in the cool, damp woods of West Virginia helping you stupidly race your mountain bike for 24 hours. Because of this, you somehow find the will to rise and get ready to head back out on course.
He wants you back on course, but he also senses that maybe your aren’t ready just yet. He produces some warm water and a towel and suggest that you clean things up “below the equator” and put on some fresh shorts while he gets you a fully charged light battery.
You are cold and the last thing you feel like doing is taking off anything. But you do it, because right now you are a zombie and would pretty much do anything you’re told.
Stripping down hurt (of course it did, even thinking hurts) and you were indeed cold, but the warm water felt amazing and was only outdone by the feeling of pulling on fresh bibs. While you’re at it you find some dry socks and gloves. You start to feel almost human again.
You tighten the sweat soaked chin strap on your foul smelling helmet, turn your lights on, make a few adjustments and find your bike. Some parting words of encouragement and a painful slap on the back from your “pit boss” and the 10 minute break is now over and you’re back on the trail. The new chamois has you feeling refreshed, or at least as refreshed as someone who has been riding since noon the day before can feel.
“You gotta love a fresh chamois,” you think to yourself as you pedal on, trying to wrap your head around the idea of riding for another 8 hours.
End.
