The race I'll never forget (part 2)

The 24 hours of Finale

Friday, the day before the race, 24 hour town exploded to a tent village for about 2000 people. All of our bikes we assembled and a little preriding of the course was necessary.
The Course: Approximately 4 miles with 700' -800' of climbing. Out moderate pace for the preride we rounded the course in about 24 minutes. This was a little slower than our average time for the 24 hours. So the bikes (all Niner One 9, Tang) were great! Super smooth on this Rocky and 6" deep braking bump covered trail.

So after the preride, the crowd of athletes and photographers was unrelenting. Whatever we were doing there was someone talking to us or taking our picture. We felt like celebrities, in a way I guess we were.

So for the race, most of the time we did two laps at a time until the morning when we did one at a time. I was elected to do the run and the first lap. The run was crazy, I almost thought we were in Spain and there were a bunch of bulls chasing us. The area the run went through was only about 2 meters wide or on narrow single track, people were throwing elbows and pushing, if not the running of the bulls it was football (American) training camp.

When I got to the bike I was in about 30th place but by the end of the first lap I was up to about 5th. After a couple laps we were up to third and never looked back. A couple times we thought were in second but the standings were a little hard to decipher, so who knows.

The more laps we did the more people were coming to our camp and asking us questions, looking at our bikes. The language barrier was a little tough sometime but I could tell they were impressed and amazed at what we were doing on singlespeeds.

At the end of the race awards came quickly!!! The there was a huge crowd at least 1000 people.
The first thing they did was the General classification (the overall). After calling up the Italian national development team (1st, 8 people), then the second place team (also 8 person), the called team Nasal (that's us, more on that later), the crowd went crazy! Everyone’s eyes and cameras were on us, almost completely ignoring the two other teams.

Over all a great race and awesome people all around wonderful event! Thanks Mauro, Silvio, Lorenzo, Enrico and everyone else involved with race and getting our intergalactic team to Italy.


Pictures to come soon.

More posts to come...
Who took my baby?
Are we really in Italy doing a mountain bike photo/video shoot?
I haven't forgotten about Dirt (mud), Sweat and Gears.