12 Hours at John Muir

In early August I was reading a post on the BikeMasters blog about a 24hr mountain bike race called 24 Hours of 9 Mile. This is an endurance race that takes place in the 9 Mile Forest in Wasau, WI. Roxy, the author of the post, and Jason, 2 people I've never met placed 3rd and rode 266 miles in 24 hrs....yeah that's 266 miles. I was extremely inspired. I quickly began a search for other endurance races, thinking it sounded really fun and extremely challenging. I came across a website called ride24 which listed endurance races by state. I found one called The 8th annual 12 Hours at John Muir. I called my neighbor and good friend Damon and recommended that we give the 12 hour duo race a try. Without hesitation he was in. We registered and decided to take our wives for support. Martin another one of our friends supplied a 25 (slight exaggeration) page e-mail regarding the do's and don'ts of endurance racing. He ran support for Roxy and Jason the folks that inspired our competition and this post so, the e-mail was legit. Our wives did a wonderful job with support. They made sure we ate and drank during every stop. I was so worried that I would get a flat and either be stuck out there pushing a bike back or merely fixing a flat. Anyway, Damon and I rode 108 miles in 10 hours, the race was originally scheduled for June and was rescheduled due to rain. The October timeframe meant that if kept to 12 hours the race would run into the dark of the night and was thus shortened. We placed 3rd, made it without flatting, and without major injury. Below are a couple of pictures taken of the race. Thanks Roxy, Jason, and Martin for inspiring us to try this type of race, the trail was fast and awesome. We had a lot of fun. Thanks Damon for a heck of a time.