BBB...Boggs, Beastie Boys, Bros and Badass!

[Ryan Gibson]

 

"The hits keep on rolling" is how to best sum up this past weekend at the BikeMonkey Boggs 8 hour XC race in Bogg's Demonstration Forest outside of Cobb, CA.

 

I decided to do this race many months ago with my friend Rich Gassaway, as BikeMonkey puts on a great event.  I have never ridden Boggs, and have never done a two person 8 hour, but,  regardless of results, I am so happy I did. This was the coolest MTB race event I have ever been too, save Sea Otter, which was just as cool-just in a totally different way (i.e. like a stadium Pink Floyd concert vs. an acoustic small venue Dead concert).

 

Anyway, I was not able to train like I wanted the weeks leading up, as the birth of our second child has really changed the home dynamic :) I had planned to ride long and hard early in the week, race the Summit Shorty Wednesday, and do intervals Thursday...I only got a few short rides in, but felt pretty good driving up Saturday morning VERY early for the 8am start.

I arrived to find Rich, who had camped out with his two boys the night before (and experienced a good EQ shake in the middle of the night no less), thinking I was going out first...the first expression of our non-existent strategy and planning. The second was partially a function of the first-not the best fueling. The third, before the race started, was having to use a funky smelling h20 bottle. Okay, hustle to get up front for a good place to make the mass start.

 

5-4-3-2-1-GO! I started in the second row of riders behind Carlos in his truck pulling us all (several hundred of the ~700 racers) up the fire road. Given our only amount of planning involved deciding to race one lap on-one lap off, I went hard and found myself entering the singletrack 5th or 6th overall. Another friend had described the trails as like "magic carpet", and I have to agree. The slight rain they got the previous Thursday settled the dust down just enough to be tolerable (I do still have black lung though), and wow was the course fun. A few technical rocky/rooty drops, but nothing major, and most just flowy and fast gut checkers with two significant fire road climbs in between. Also fun was the option section just before turning to the start/finish, which had nothing left and two nice jumps right-I took the right every lap for fun, and put one heck of a flying pass down coming off the second jump on one of my early laps-it was safe and clean, but also very cool (I would have thought so myself even it was me being the recipient). Probably a good thing, but my funky water bottle bounced out half empty half way through the first lap, never to be seen again-not really a problem on a 40ish minute lap though.  

 

Well, my first lap ended up being just shy of 39 minutes, which apparently was faster than my teammate expected...as he did not show for the hand-off for three or so minutes! Crap, all that effort for a fast lap (I finished 5th overall across the line my first lap), only to give it back. Rich was off and despite reeling from his mistake, I too showed up about 40 seconds late to the second transition for my second lap-crap again! Really a comedy of errors at this point, but we kept pushing hard each lap, turning almost identical lap times in the 40's, then 41's, then 42's, then 43's.

 

By lap five I was in GI distress, nauseated, weak and cramping-bad. Not sure if it was the funky water bottle or poor fueling, but I was walking dead until I drank a Coke...wow, that stuff really helped. At this point the only thing keeping me going was that I only had one lap left, based on our lap times and the cut-off. Rich and I managed to finish six laps each at an almost identical pace for an average lap time of 42:09 in 8:25:55. Despite giving 4 or so minutes up on clumsy transitions, we won the category by 10 minutes! Total shock. Only one other two person team turned 12 laps. 

 

When we signed up for the event I suggested "Marinators" as a team name...Rich, who registered our team, decided he liked "Indiana Monkey Jerk Excursion" better, which got a good laugh when announced for the win over the PA :)

 

During my off-time during the day, and after the race, the vibe was amazing. Beastie Boys all day blaring-nothing else, and why not!  Lauganitas IPA on tap. Kids break dancing to the b-boys harder than I can ever remember seeing before. Good food. Cool people. Pinch me.

 

Back to reality behind a desk today and still in shock that we won...oh, and my legs are destroyed and my lung are full of dirt. What a great day!

 

[Carl Sanders]

Don't get much better -- congrats!

[Ryan Gibson]

Thanks Carl, but really irrelevant compared to your monster effort!

[Paul Montgomery]

Nice work!...Man, I got to start doing the fun ones...