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| Tofurkey day is one of my favorite holidays |
The last six months have brought a lot of changes to my life (new home, new minivan, new things to look forwards to at work!), and I couldn't be more thankful for all of the neat opportunities I've been able to have. Especially the opportunities centered around bikes! :)
One of the opportunities I'm most particularly thankful for was the
12 hour Nite Nationals down in Auburn, Alabama this past October. Everything from the race promoters, to the course, to the drive down was amazing - especially being able to drive down with my favorite mechanic, Dan, and being able to make a pit-stop in Birmingham to be able to see my really good friends Reena, Joe, and Katie! (To top things off, my friend Jason came to the race to cheer me on with his girlfriend, Marla!) Everything I love about bikes, traveling, and racing was all rolled up in to one with this race.
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| Chewacla State Park |
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| Dan killed it on the wall! |
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| Me? Not so much... |
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| Here I was hoping the course would be as much fun in the dark as it was in the light! |
The 12 hour Nite Nationals is a race that I will go back for again and again! Sponsored by
Nite Rider Technical Lighting Systems and hosted by
Chainbuster Racing, it was an incredibly fun race that is only going to get better year after year. The inaugural Nite Nationals was the finale of a three-race series. I was happy to be able to make the trek down for the series finale... but doing all of the races in the series is now on my list of "things to do." 12 Hours of Zombie Apocalypse, 12 Hours of Insomnia, 12 Hours of Nite Nationals... seriously, each race in the series sounds amazing, and I know for a fact the last race in the series was!
I'm incredibly thankful of
Danielle Musto, who has become my mentor/coach/race travel bff in the last year. Without her, who knows if I would have gotten in to endurance racing. Just like any other race I had signed up for, 12 Hours of Nite Nationals wasn't any different: once we heard of the race, we decided it was a good one for me to train for! (Although I'm pretty sure we could talk ourselves in to thinking
every race is a good race to train for!!) Nite Nationals was put on the radar after I had finished racing 12 hours at Wausau, and there wasn't much that didn't sound awesome about it! I had fallen in love with night riding, Tommy from Nite Rider is super awesome and he would be there, road trips are always a blast, and the race was in Alabama - which meant there was a possibility I could see those aforementioned pals of mine. I was in!
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| Half hour before race start! |
I am also super lucky (and equally thankful) that the
Grand Rapids Bicycle Company lets me sneak away for races. As responsible for my racing as Danielle is, GRBC is just as much to blame. I can't imagine working at any other bike shop or with any other coworkers. Everyone has been super supportive and it's been awesome to be a part of such a neat shop. Being able to lead women's group rides, host fat bike nights, to go on group rides that end with pancakes and coffee, and to watch kid's get better at riding... that's my dream job! To add in bike racing on top of all of those things really is the cherry on top. I was really excited to put the GRBC tent in the rental car and to drive down to Alabama to represent not just myself as a racer, but to represent my favorite bike shop. :)
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| I substituted Dan for Danielle for traveling to Alabama ;) |
12 hours of Nite Nationals was one of the first races I would be traveling to without my race travel BFF, so I was a little nervous about that. However, it was the first (of hopefully many!) that I got to travel to with my mechanic, Dan Martinek. Dan started working at GRBC in April, and he's been constantly my favorite bike mechanic since! It's really important to find a good mechanic when you start racing, especially when you're dumping a lot of time into training, money into traveling, and you're driving a long distance in order to compete. Just think about how terrible it would have been if I had gotten myself down to Alabama only for my bike to break! I'm so thankful Dan was with me down in Alabama, especially because I didn't have just one mechanical... I had two! My mechanicals were pretty early on in the race and I wouldn't have been able to crush out 11 laps if he wasn't there to not only fix them - but to fix them quickly! After ditching my Foundry Tomahawk due to a bent derailleur and shifting issues, I came running through the woods less than 20 minutes later with a slashed tire sidewall on my back-up bike! Dan also helped me stay on my nutrition plan for the entire 12 hours of the race, kept track of the competition, and he cheered for me each time I rolled past. Seeing him waiting in the same spot every hour was really encouraging, and after I went back out lap after lap I began looking forward to see him and to tell him about the trail! When the sun finally came up in my 10th lap I told him that he should ride a lap with me after the race if he wasn't too tired, because there was a waterfall and it looked really cool. He just smiled and said, "sure" even though I know in his head he was thinking "eff that, you're crazy!" He later told me that there was a brown dust booger coming out of my nose when I asked...
Speaking of mechanics and mechanicals... I'm really thankful I swapped the stock wheels off of my Tomahawk for a shiny set of
Velocity Blunt SS's! The course at
Chewacla State Park where Nite Nationals was held was one of the rockiest, rootiest courses I had ever ridden! The sidewalls on my tires were beat but my wheels held up amazingly! So much so, that Dan made a mental note to buy the person who built my wheels a beer the next time he saw them. (Thanks Keean!)
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| I didn't realize how dusty the course was until the sun came up! |
It was also really awesome that Nite Rider was at the race with a bunch of demo lights for racers to use. Dan already had a lot on his plate, so having Tommy and Kevin from Nite Rider keep track of my battery life and swap my lights for me was perfect. The lights that they let me use were SO BRIGHT. I never had an issue of out-riding my lights, or my lights dimming, or malfunctioning in any way - which is super important when the race you're doing starts at 9pm! Riding at night would definitely not be as much fun without reliably bright lights. Suuuuper thankful I can ride my bike at night!
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| Myself with Kevin and Tommy from Nite Rider |
It was really weird to finish a race at 9am in the morning. The sun was out, the weather was warming up, and I was all twitchy from 12 hours of caffeine! I can never sleep after a long race, so Dan and I said good-bye to all of our new friends and hopped back in the car to drive for as long as we could before the caffeine wore out. It's always sad to finish a race after having it to look forwards to for so long, but I was really excited to be a tourist on the way home! We stopped at some flea markets before calling it a night outside of Nashville, Tennessee, and we got to stop for a tour at Mammoth Cave the next day! I was really exhausted from sleep deprivation on the way home, so I was super thankful that I didn't have to rush back to the bike shop right away. On the way down to Alabama, we had run over a piece of semi-truck retread, and although I stupidly didn't get the rental car insurance, I'm super thankful that that event didn't ruin the entire trip! We were able to safely drive the car, and the rental company is only charging me $788 for the damage to the front bumper...
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| Crossing the finish line, 11 laps in for a total of 121 miles! |
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| Carey Lowery was an amazing opponent to chase, I placed 2nd, and Rachel Millsop came in 3rd |
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| Thankful for equal payouts for both men and women! This went towards fixing the rental car! |
#roadwarrior status confirmed. Sounds like you took it to em here in the dirty south, come back soon now ya hear!
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