24 hours of Spokane

I've been thinking about this race for exactly 1 year. One year ago I did this race solo. I had a good race but I had some knee pain for the last half of the race. Thinking it was just the time on the bike I ignored it and paid the price. Once I sat down after the race I was done. Took 6 weeks before I could touch a bike. I've been rebuilding my fitness slowly over the year while working on protecting my knees. After both raising my saddle and adjusting my cleats I am able to ride 99% pain free and if there is a bit of pain it clears quickly. But my injury is permanent and has a medical name of Chrondomalacia. So I got back in shape in time for Cyclocross season which is intense but short races. We had a crappy winter so I mostly did mountain bike rides and had a decent Budu early season series. But, I'm way behind on long distance rides. Combine that and my fear of re-injury and I opted to do a team relay this year. I wanted to have a PedalMasher team but their wasn't enough interest so I bailed on the race this year. Then I got an email from one of my PedalMasher teammates who was putting together a team with his wife. I joined in as the 5th. Then two bailed on us and the search began to fill in the slots. I was teased a few times with being told that we might have a pro join our ranks. But that failed to materialize. I asked a few of our super fast open racers and didn't get any bites. As people heard about me looking for people I got a hit from Rich from Second Ascent racing. He wanted to race and it worked out well since his wife was racing on another team. I then spent a week asking a lot of people to join. No luck. Then on the ferry ride back from the last race I got talking with Jason from Veloce Velo cycling and he was very excited but needed to check with his wife. She wanted to go since she knew some people that were going to be there. Woo Hoo, we finally have a full squad. I spent a lot of time organizing the stuff we'd need to bring and getting everything loaded into my wife's truck and horse trailer. You say...Horse Trailer....Yeah, but this thing is 32 feet of awesomeness! 1/3 is where the horses can live and it's perfect for putting all the crap we needed. The front 2/3 is living quarters and I mean a full bathroom with toilet and shower. A kitchen area with microwave and gas stove. It has a queen size bed with a flatscreen TV. Very nice....oh, and did I mention the air conditioner. It was needed as the temps were in the 80s. NICE! Since I've done this race like 7 times I decided not to pre-ride on Friday, but Molly and a bunch of others went out for a look. I spent time getting the camp setup which included pulling out the awning, setting up the two team tents, chairs, table, bike repair stand, tools, carpet. We all chilled that night and awaited the madness that the next 24 hours would bring. Dan wanted to go first as he's a rock star runner and the race starts with a 600 yard le-mans trail run. He did awesome and was in the lead group to get back to the bike. Once I got done watching his start I headed back to camp to change. I was second in the line-up. Dan did a really fast loop and we had a great handoff and out I went. 15.something miles and 900 ft of climbing. I was pushing it hard and had a decent 58 minute loop. I did the handoff to Kari and she was gone like lightening. Normally getting "chicked" bothers me but I know Kari is an amazing rider and was happy knowing that she'd probably have the fastest laps of us all. Good stuff. The handoff's continued and we were doing well with no mechanicals and all of our times were fairly close together. Now comes my first night lap. Normally I can do about the same speed in the day or night but tonight was different. First I was hurting. The heat must have done me in, but the second thing was the dust. All that dust with our lights hitting it blinded you to the trail. Disapponted I finished and proceeded to make sure the next lap would be good by getting some good food and lots of drinks in me. 1 1/2 sleep and I was up and waiting to go again. Better time! Nice. A check of the board shows us in 3rd place but only by a bit. The whole team hammers hard and we pass 2nd and gain to 17 minutes. They rally and pull the time to 8 minutes. We hammer again and pull ahead to the point where we are going to be able to get one more lap than 3rd. Success! 2nd place! We're all happy but it's almost hard to tell. We are all spent! during the last bit of the race Molly has finally crawled in bed after being up for more than 24 hours as our manager making sure we had everything we needed and were up and about for our laps. As awards are about to start Molly wanders in and gets some pictures of us on the podium and I run back to load everything up. Molly is a trooper and drives the 6 hours home while I nap and or annoy her with lack of sleep based conversation.
I'm starting to think that doing the relay with those super fast laps and then a few hours to get stiff may be harder than the solo I did last year. I really hope that my knees get to the point where I can check my theory out.
Now it's time to think about next year and what crazyness I'll get myself into this time!