re: Anyone here participating in Bike around the Bay this weekend?

quote:

---

Rocky Hill Ranch. Don't worry, I'm doing it on a team. Only crazy people do it solo.

---

Man, I love that race. My team won the Open Coed class last year. Three guys and a girl. It was probably my 4th time to race it and by far the best prepared and competitive we've ever been. Racing for 24 hours is one of those things you can't fully describe to others. It's fun, physically and mentally exhausting, nerve wrackng, and surreal. You're racing on and off all damned day and night, sleeping for an hour or two when you can force your over amped brain and body to shut down, eating weird foods at weird times. Nothing is normal about that 24 hours. You're in a coccoon of frenzied bikes, dust, mud, roaring generators, lights piercing through the darkness of your 2am lap. Legs cramping and stomach in knots, heart pounding as you chase down someone ahead who may or maynot even be ion your category. It's nuts.

I've done a LOT of bike racing and for what it's worth, here's a few tips I can offer for 24 hour teams:

1. Bring ever piece of cycling cloths you own, no matter how out dated. starting a lap in a fresh dry cloths is priceless.

2. Chamois Butter is your friend. Use liberally.

3. along with the usual bars, gels, blocks, and powdered drink mixes, bring real food. Cans of soup have carbs, protein, and salt that your body will crave. Trail mix, chips (not too spicy, stick with something kinda bland). And the secret waeapon: peanutbutter and jelly sandwiches. Cut them in half and wrap in palstic. You can eat them on the bike.

4. If you're on a four person team, consider an alternative rotation. Instead of a standard where Racers A, B, C, and D, all go one after another over and over, this is what we do: break your team in to two pairs: A&B and C&D. Here's how the rotation works:

A rides a lap while B waits, kitted up and ready to go
A finishes and tags out to B. B rides a lap while A stays kitted up, ready to go, stretching, eating and drinking, bathroom break whatever.
B finishes and A goes out again. B waits, still kitted up and ready.
A finishes a lap, tags out to B who rockets off, and A is done for that rotation. He can get a shower, put on clean dry comfortable cloths, and chill for 4 hours.

Team C&D are now kitted up and ready.

B finishes his lap, tags out to C, and he's done for 4 hours to chill.

C rides a lap, tags out to D, and waits for D to finish so he can go again.

Etc. So it's A-B-A-B-C-D-C-D over and over and over. Because it takes about an hour more or less to ride a lap at RHR, you can ride HARD for a lap, rest for an hour while keeping your body slightly rev'ed, and then ride HARD again. Then you have 4-5 hours to recover.

This also allows you to get about 4-5 hours of sleep if you can make yourself shut down.

I race for Bikesport racing and we've been doing this tactic for years. It works.

As you get towards the end of the race you may have to switch to a simple A-B-C-D rotation as people get tired and can't keep pace with only one hours rest.

It also really helps to have support staff there to do things like cook food, fill bottles, clean and wrench bikes etc. Last year we had two team mates do that and I think it made a huge difference. Hell, our guy did a full brake bleed on a bike at 3 in the morning while our racer slept.

Also, bring extra bikes and parts if you have them. The intensity of 24 hours out there will break shite like nowhere else. If it's rainy/muddy, bring lots of extra brake pads and chains.

Good luck, wish I was racing this year but things didn't work out for my team to all be available.