12 Hours of Mesa Verde!

Last weekend, Chris and I (and the doggies) headed down to Cortez, CO for the awesome race, 12 hours of Mesa Verde. Originally I was going to do it solo, but looking back i am soooo glad Chris convinced me to do it on a team-Our team consisted of me, Chris, and our friend Kris Lathrop- Hi Ho Silver was our name! yeah!

The trail that we race on is Phil's World- one of the most fun, fast, swoopy trails ever- with the highlight of the course being Ribcage- yeah, you can get some serious air on those swoops if you're not careful- I rode several times on my front wheel praying that i could hold on with out crashing...

Lathrop did the first lap, which includes some running, and sprinting to get a good position. He ended up top 10 at the start! unfortunately, Kris flatted twice, and we ended up being a bit behind compared to the teams we wanted to be competitive with. Chris also had a rough first lap with his pedal breaking and derailleur hanger messing up- luckily though that was the last of our issues for the day, and the remaining laps were problem free! In between the laps, we had made a sweet campsite with a few of our friends from Durango and Glenwood- Dave n Kathy, Nick and Kara, Tim and Megan, Shannon Gibson and Kenny, Jen Gersbach and Miles, and others who came and went- I think we also had a 1 to 1 ratio of dogs to people too- I was excited to race, but it was awesome to just hang out and relax with everyone all day too!

We ended up 4th overall for the co-ed 3-4 people team- Which I thought was great! Jay Henry's team won, Gersbach and Gibson's team got 2nd, and another team I don't know got 3rd-
After racing we relaxed and killed a few beers around the camp fire. Doesn't get better than that!

The next day Chris, Kris and I rolled into Durango and met up with Jen G. and Miles and took the dogs to the river to romp and play- there was talk of doing a ride, but that quickly dissolved and relaxing was a way better idea. After dominating a couple bakeries (Absolut Bakery in Monaco, and Bread in Durango) we munched on our cookies and baked goods while driving back to Glenwood. It was a solid weekend of sweet riding/racing (whichever you would like to call it) and catching up with great friends. Next stop- Nathrop! Woohoo!