Over Memorial Weekend, Allen Goldbeck and I made the 6.5 hr drive from the Portland Metro to Spokane, WA for the 24hrs of Round and Round race. We met up with 3 other guys (all friends of Allen) who made a similar 6+ hr drive from the Seattle/Tacoma area of western Washington.

Friday Night (5/28):

Set up the tents and as a group pre-rode the course with no lights. We made it back by 9pm and could still see which one might think portends of beautiful weather…not so.

The course:

• distance: 14.7 miles
• technically: moderate…pretty rocky at times as evidenced by the number of flats seen
• climbing: 7-8 of them but none longer than 0.25 miles
• aerobically: strenuous
• time to complete: our 5-person team was as fast as 1hr 8min up to 1hr 26min
• average speeds: our 5-person team ranged from 9mph up to 13mph
• attendance: 700+ racers (one unicyclist)

Saturday/Race Day (5/29):

Race started at Noon with a Le Mans started that I got volunteered for. Why not? I can start my ‘cross training early!

Sunday (5/30):

After some calculations, we figured we could try to get all 5 guys 4 laps each, so 20 total for the team. Come Noon on Sunday, we were only able to get 19 so our anchor Doug didn’t get a chance but he was cool just sleeping and drinking

My lap times:

1. 1:12:07.143 at Noon on Saturday (this included the Le Mans start…so not bad)
2. 1:09:35.629 at about 5:30pm Saturday evening
3. 1:19:25.089 at 12:45am-ish on Sunday (this was my only night lap and one I’ll never forget…so beautiful…and only the 2nd time ever I’ve mtn biked at night)
4. 1:15:27.249 at 7am-ish on Sunday (I was really happy with this lap time as I was fighting cramps in both quads, my back and my left arm)

Over the course of the race, we each could not have gotten more than 4 hrs of sleep. I know my figure was more like 2.5hrs

-will

Pac NW AllStarz

Crossniacs Oregon Syndicate