2008 24 Hours of Moab Day 2

24 Hours of Moab, endurance racing, Moab, mountain biking | UltraRob | Thursday, October 23rd, 2008 at 5:33 pm

Roan Exelby on lap 16

Update 10/27: I’ve created a page for my 2008 24 Hours of Moab photos.

When I woke up Sunday morning, it was cloudy and cold but none of the wind from the day before. It’s always cold there first thing in the morning. Even the year I raced when it was in the 80’s Saturday afternoon, it got cold at night.

Breakfast at the 24 Hours of Moab

I headed over to the the big check-in tents to check the RealTime Scoring and get something to eat. The lead solo riders of Josh Tostado, Tinker Juarez and Roan Exelby had continued to hammer out the laps while I slept.

Just after I posted my Day 1 report, I checked the results and saw that Chris Eatough hadn’t headed out when he came in at 10:21 PM. I had seen him on that lap. He looked good and had opened a couple minute lead over Tinker. The lap before I had seen both of them riding together.

I heard that Eatough had gone to the medical tent and that he wasn’t feeling good. I never heard what they thought was going on but he was feeling better in the morning. On Tostado’s last lap, I heard a couple guys riding with him saying it was probably because he was so far behind Tostado. Some riders are that way but I’ve never heard anything about Eatough being like that.

Jari Kirkland, Women’s Solo winner on her 13th lap

After breakfast I headed out and spent a few hours on the first part of the course. Not surprisingly most of the team riders still looked fairly good. Even the top solo riders were looking good. Some of the other solo riders looked like zombies which is at least how I felt Sunday mornings when I raced there.

Tinker Still Looking Strong on Lap 16

Although Tinker was still looking good on his last lap, he said in his race report that he was beat up. His knee was hurting and he took way too many Advils. Because the top guys make it look so easy, it’s easy to forgot that they suffer too.

This was the first time I’ve been to the 24 Hours of Moab since I last raced it solo in 2001. It’s a good course for me in a lot of ways but all 4 times I raced it I had an asthma attack. It didn’t seem to be so much from all the dust but from the campfire smoke. I’d do fine until I’d come through the pits around day break. By then there was always plenty of smoke and my lungs would shut down.

Being there this year certainly made me want to go back and race it again. Since I started taking Xolair, I haven’t had any bad asthma attacks. Maybe I’d be alright racing there now.

The best I’ve done at the 24 Hours of Moab is 13 laps. Since 2001 I’ve learned a lot about staying awake and how to eat. With more experience and being able to breathe better, I think I could do 14 laps. As competitive as it’s gotten, it probably wouldn’t get me in the top 5 but I might be close. First I have lots of weight to lose and lots of training to do.