Race report: 12 Hours of Mesa Verde v. 3. part II

Saturday was race day.  Drew and Jim got up crazy early (5 AM) to go to Denny's for breakfast, while Shelly, Leslie (who had crashed with us at the last minute) and I tried to get a few more winks of sleep.

We elected to have me do the LeMans start, since I had not done it before.  The likelihood of me having to do 4 laps as opposed to Drew's 3 would be higher if I started, which was OK because Drew raced for 8 hours the previous weekend.

I was ready to roll by 7 AM

and my bike was staged where I could find it.

We lined up and the start gun went off!

photo courtesy of Dusty P.

At the LeMans start, I felt like I was in a heard of stampeding bison.

After everyone got on their bikes, the furious pedaling began.  This created some dust.  I did not like this part, and fell pretty far to the back of the herd.

photo courtesy of Dusty P.

With several hundred racers all trying to race the same singletrack course, there were massive delays and long, long conga lines.  I got stuck in a couple of really bad ones, and was barely putting out any effort.  This cost us big time.  As I came into the start finish area,

 photo courtesy of Milissa M.

the clock ticked 1 hour 41 minutes, which put us in only 19th place out of 25 teams.  We figured that was because most co-ed duo teams opt to have the guy start because, in most teams, the guy is much faster than the girl.  But still, my poor competitiveness early on in lap 1 did not help.  We were expecting to move up throughout the day.

And we did.  Drew had a good first lap, then I went out on lap 2 and logged my fastest time yet in the three years I have raced MV (1:33:58).

Other Revolution team members were having some problems with crashes and mechanicals, but Cousin Milissa was riding well and looked awesome in her disco outfit coming out of the disco tunnel.

photo courtesy of Nancy W.

Lap 3 for me was uneventful but solid. Lap 3 for Drew was his best yet.  He finished lap 3 with 1 hour 25 minutes left on the clock, so I went out for our final lap.  By this point I think we were in 10th or 11th place.  

As I came across the finish line at 10 minutes after 6 PM,

we had, in true Jordan fashion, whittled down our competition to end up in 9th place.  Drew and I both felt very good about our endurance and lack of big crashes, so we celebrated at the free pasta feed and complimentary Colorado brews.  We hung out to see some of our teammates take high honors in the solo and duo categories, and then headed back to the rental house for a soak in the hot, hot tub and much needed bed rest.

The next day we packed it up and hightailed it back to SLC.  That was one fun race!